bartusis on the problem of small holding soldiers in late byzantium

On the Problem of Smallholding Soldiers in Late ByzantiumAuthor(s): Mark C. BartusisReviewed work(s):Source: Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 44 (1990), pp. 1-26Published by: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1291614 .Accessed: 31/10/2011 06:44

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On the Problem of Smallholding Soldiers

in Late Byzantium MARK C. BARTUSIS

From a fiscal point of view, there were three ba-

sic types of soldiers in Byzantium during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the mercenary, whose pay consisted primarily of direct

grants of cash; the pronoia soldier, who received a conditional, technically non-bequeathable grant of fiscal revenues derived from specific properties and paroikos households, along with certain rights to rents on some properties and to the labor services of the paroikoi he was assigned;' and a third

type of soldier, usually viewed as someone who held a more or less direct grant of land as compen- sation for or on condition of military service. In modern scholarship this last warrior is known by several names: the settled soldier, the peasant soldier, the enrolled soldier, or the smallholding soldier. Whatever label is employed, he has been regarded as essentially distinct from the pronoia soldier, who generally had a much higher social position and only an indirect connection to the land from which his income was derived, and from the mercenary, who had no inherent connection to land. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the difficulties involved in identifying what I shall call the "smallholding soldier," to point out indisputable examples of such soldiers in late Byzantium, and, finally, to define the smallholding soldier and consider the utility of the institution and its possible variations.2

A number of obstacles complicate the task of identifying concrete examples of smallholding soldiers. The sources rarely speak of this type of soldier, and the historians, in particular, generally convey the impression that money and pronoia were the only normal ways of remunerating soldiers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Consider George Pachymeres' description of the state of the army in Anatolia in the early years of the fourteenth century: "Not only were the Ro- man forces weakened, but having lost their pronoiai, they fled hastily from the east to the west, keeping only their lives; it was impossible to install others with fixed salaries."3 John Kantakouzenos makes the same distinction between mercenaries and pronoiars, though he prefers to refer to the latter as those soldiers that received 3teoo66bog ~x

XOCm(OCv, that is, "income [or revenue] from lands [or estates, villages]," as when he refers to "the mercenaries of the army and the strongest of those having incomes from lands" (T [tLoOooq tLX6v 'Tg oYTgaTtag xat TOV EX ( (XoQLCwv Tag 3Too66oug

•X6VTWv Toig; 6bUVaTCOLTrO1g).4 Nikephoros Grego- ras makes the same bifurcated distinction when he writes that in 1327 Andronikos III promised "to those serving as soldiers means of incomes and in-

'On pronoia, and military pronoiars in particular, see the bib- liographical references in J. Haldon, "Limnos, Monastic Hold- ings and the Byzantine State: Ca. 1261-1453," in A. Bryer and H. Lowry, ed., Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society (Birmingham, Eng.-Washington, D.C., 1986), 167 note 10, and in M. Bartusis, "The Kavallarioi of Byzan- tium," Speculum 63 (1988), 344 note 9.

2 Inasmuch as I am restricting myself to the late period, I will be ignoring the problem of the middle Byzantine military lands. For this subject, see J. Haldon, Recruitment and Conscription in the Byzantine Army c. 550-950: A Study on the Origins of the Stratiotika Ktemata (Vienna, 1979).

3Georgii Pachymeris de Michaele et Andronico Palaeologis, ed. I. Bekker, 2 vols. (Bonn, 1835), II, 389.10-13 (hereafter Pachy- meres, Bonn ed.).

4loannis Cantacuzeni eximperatoris historiarum libri IV, ed. L. Schopen and B. Niebuhr, 3 vols. (Bonn, 1828-32), II, 81.15-16 (hereafter Kantakouzenos); also I, 287.18 if, and II, 175.3-7. P. Mutaffiev, "Vojni'ki zemi i vojnici v Vizantija prez XIII-XIV v.," Spisanie na Biilg. Akad. na nauk. 27 (1923), 1-113, repr. in Mutaffiev, Izbrani proizvedenija (Sofia, 1973), I, 525-26, 530, and 547. Other passages speaking of pronoia as "incomes": Kantakouzenos, I, 119.15-16; 169.17-18; 443; 457.13-14; II, 63.12-22; 367.19-20; 476.7; and Nicephori Gregorae byzantina historia, ed. L. Schopen, 3 vols. (Bonn, 1829-55), I, 300.12-14; 438.6-7 (hereafter Gregoras). N. Oikonomides, "A propos des armies des premiers Paleologues et des compagnies de soldats," TM 8 (1981), 353.

2 MARK C. BARTUSIS

creases of salary" (ToLg &6 oTQaTevoAvotg n3t6ovg neoo686ov xat [too6ov i~ntL6o;tg).5

Certainly the most direct approach for identifying soldiers that were neither pronoiars nor mercenaries is to look for evidence of grants of "land" to soldiers (as opposed to revenues or cash), but the customary absence of precise terminology in the narrative sources often makes it difficult to distinguish grants of land to smallholding soldiers from grants of revenues from land to pronoia soldiers. This is much more troublesome than differ-

entiating smallholding soldiers and mercenaries, because both the smallholding soldier and the

pronoiar had by definition an attachment to land. In one instance, Gregoras reports that during 1341 Kantakouzenos refurbished the military by distributing "properties" (ktimata) to the whole sol-

diery. While this may sound like a land distribution, Gregoras in fact was speaking of Kantakou- zenos' exisdsis of military pronoiai, the well-known Patrikiotes episode, which according to Kantakou- zenos involved "incomes" (prosodoi) rather than

"properties."6 Documentary sources, for their

part, are inherently somewhat more precise, but

they present their own difficulties. Typically, we read that a certain soldier held land, but it is not

always clear whether he did so as a pronoiar or as a smallholding soldier, or, for that matter, whether the land he held had any connection to his military vocation whatsoever. Special care must also be taken to be sure that the subject of any particular case is really soldiers at all.

Consequently, when a particular text is vague, it has often been all too easy to construct an interpretation involving smallholding soldiers, while over-

looking other interpretations that suit the facts no less adequately. A number of such texts have been cited by scholars to illustrate the existence of small-

holding soldiers. Although the arguments offered have always been brief and, generally, have appeared in the course of expositions and arguments on related though different topics, most of the texts are so well known and often cited that it is

important to discuss them in some detail before

presenting some concrete, indisputable examples of smallholding soldiers in late Byzantium. Of the

following eight cases, it is not certain that the first four deal with soldiers at all, and while the latter four are certainly concerned with soldiers, the issue is not necessarily smallholding soldiers. I should emphasize that my purpose is not to prove that smallholding soldiers are not the subject of these texts, only that, in my opinion, because of the

ambiguity of the evidence, it is possible to construct reasonable interpretations that do not in- volve smallholding soldiers. It is hoped that discussion of these texts will lead to more conclusive

interpretations.

(1) The first text is Pachymeres' account of the so-called "akritai" of the Nikaian era. He writes that the Laskarides, in order to maintain the East- ern frontier, "turned to the mountains, securing [them] with many strong settlers from all over (ToLg navTaX6OE6v i to(xotg)." Somewhat later, faced with

increasing Turkish pressure, they "did not leave those living on the mountains (To;g ? t6bg Totg

OYeotY oLxO 'VTag) uncared for, who, not having an incentive to remain, were prepared to emigrate if

anywhere enemies should attack somehow.... But

they granted tax exemptions (ateleiai) to all, pronoiai to the more illustrious among them, and im-

perial letters to those with an enterprising spirit." In addition, "the proud men inhabiting the highlands (Tag &xpag)" also received "daily imperial signs of friendship (xaO rll~etva"Sg tqhouro(g (3aotLXLXacg)," probably some kind of added pre- mium in specie or in kind.7 As a result, their economic condition improved, and they were per- suaded to remain.

The most commonly held opinion is that the

highlanders of the Eastern frontier were small-

holding soldiers who, in return for their military services in defending the frontier, were given some combination of land, tax exemption, some cash

payments, and, in a few cases, pronoia. G. Ostro-

gorsky wrote that "John Vatatzes parcelled out land on condition of military service" to "all the soldier-borderers," and "the local population of the border areas was used for the performance of stratiatike service." P. Charanis classified the highlanders under his rubric "enrolled soldiers." D. M.

5Gregoras, I, 397.11-12. Mutaffiev, "Vojni'ki," 526. I6otL 7rQoo660wv could conceivably refer to both income from pronoiai and direct produce from land (and hence denote, respectively, pronoiars and smallholding soldiers). There is in fact an example where the related word Elo668,tpa means agricultural produce in kind: F. Dl1ger, Aus den Schatzkammern des Heiligen Berges (Munich, 1948), no. 45-46, II, lines 13 f (hereafter Schatzkammer). On the whole, however, I think Gregoras' phrase, "means of (making) incomes," is such an oblique way of referring to "land" that it is unlikely he had smallholding soldiers in mind when he wrote the passage.

6Gregoras, II, 595; cf. Kantakouzenos, II, 58-63.

7Georges Pachymir6s, Relations historiques, ed. A. Failler, 2 vols. (Paris, 1984), I, 29, lines 16-17, 21-26; and 31, lines 15-17 (hereafter Pachymeres, ed. Failler) = Bonn ed., I, 16-17. See also Mutaffiev, "Vojni'ki," 595-96.

ON THE PROBLEM OF SMALLHOLDING SOLDIERS IN LATE BYZANTIUM 3

Nicol, for unknown reasons, speaks of two types of border soldiers: "soldiers native to the soil, whose families farmed their own land," and the "akritai," whom he defines as "frontier defence troops sta- tioned in the border marches." N. Oikonomides has written that the landholdings of the highlanders resembled the old military estates in which armed service was exchanged for tax exemption, though he adds that in the thirteenth century this tax exemption was total and some pronoia was involved.8 Similar opinions have been articulated by P. Mutafiiev, A. A. Vasiliev, B. Gorjanov, and P.

Wittek.9 In contrast, G. Arnakis simply speaks of the highlanders as "farmers," who were "exempt from taxation because they defended the frontiers near which their estates were located," and it can be shown that this interpretation is much more accurate than the view generally held.'0

First, we must ask what these highlanders were given. It seems that at least some of the highlanders were newcomers to the frontier area. These "settlers from all over" were presumably given the land they settled on. Then, at a later date, in order to ensure their continued occupation of the highlands, they were given tax exemption and some pronoia. What was required of them in return? For the land that some of them may have received, they were asked to inhabit the frontier, and for the tax exemption, etc., that all of them received, they were asked to remain there. In other words, the first exchange between the imperial government and the highlanders involved land in return for occupation of the highlands, and the second exchange involved tax exemption, etc., in return for continued occupation of the highlands. Although it may seem to be a fine point, neither exchange involved military service. The Nikaian emperors knew that continued occupation would include lo-

calized defense of their own lands and occasional sorties into Turkish territory for booty, and in this way the highlanders served the empire by acting as a buffer between Turkish marauders and the val- leys of the Nikaian Empire. But this "military service" was performed even before they received special exemptions; it had been necessary for their personal survival. After receiving tax exemption, there is no evidence that they performed any additional service other than defending their lands and making raids, and so their only obligation to the state was to remain on their lands.

But the real question is not whether they were "settled" or "smallholders" (both of which they do appear to have been), but whether they were soldiers. Nowhere are they called "soldiers"; never are they associated with the words for "army," "military," "battle," or "war." Nor in fact are they even called "akritai," a word that has been applied to them only by modern scholars, evoking possibly inappropriate images from an earlier time and a frontier further to the east. Pachymeres simply speaks of them as "settlers" inhabiting Tag QxeWg and says that Nikaian policy affected "all" of them, not a certain subset of the population that became "soldiers." But can the Nikaian highlanders be identified as soldiers through their actions? It seems to me that the most reasonable definition of a Byzantine soldier is a man who performed military duties at the command of military leaders re- sponsible to the imperial government. While it is possible that the highlanders may have acted at times in concert with the Nikaian army, there is nothing to suggest that they were part of this army. Rather, they were an independent group of frontier settlers only nominally under Nikaian control who, without much organization or discipline, defended their lands and harassed their opposite numbers in Turkish territory as best they could. Even with the increase in hostile activity along the frontier that led the Nikaian emperors to grant them tax exemption, gifts, and pronoiai, there is no evidence that this brought about any change whatsoever in their personal military activities, activities which, as vital as they were to the Nikaian state, did not make them soldiers."

8G. Ostrogorski, Pronija, prilog istorijifeudalizma u Vizantiji i u juznoslovenskim zemljama (Belgrade, 1951), 41-42 ( = G. Ostro- gorskij, Pour l'histoire de la fodalite byzantine [Brussels, 1954], 63- 64). Ostrogorsky used Pachymeres' reference to pronoia to support his view of a direct correlation between military service and pronoia. However, if the highlanders were not soldiers, this correlation flounders, as I think it should. P. Charanis, "On the Social Structure and Economic Organization of the Byzantine Empire in the Thirteenth Century and Later," BS1 12 (1951), 134; D. M. Nicol, The Last Centuries ofByzantium (London, 1972), 88; Oikonomides, "Compagnies," 359.

9Mutaffiev, "Vojni'ki," 557-58, 589-91, 595-97; A. A. Va- siliev, History of the Byzantine Empire (Madison, Wisc., 1964), II, 602-3; B. Gorjanov, Pozdnevizantijskij feodalizm (Moscow, 1962), 78; P. Wittek, Das Fiirstentum Mentesche (Istanbul, 1934), 10.

'0G. Arnakis, "Byzantium's Anatolian Provinces during the Reign of Michael Palaeologus," Actes du XIIe Congres international d'&tudes byzantines (Belgrade, 1964), II, 40-41.

1 The position of the highlanders, which had remained relatively stable during the reigns of John Vatatzes and Theodore II Laskaris and for the first few years of Michael VIII's reign, underwent a radical transformation shortly after the reconquest of Constantinople as they were transformed into campaign troops. What Michael VIII's official, named Chadenos, did in Asia Minor is not entirely clear, but it seems that either the landholdings of the highlanders were drastically reduced or

4 MARK C. BARTUSIS

(2) In a document from the Zographou dossier, John Apelmene, doux of the theme of Boleron and

Mosynopolis, delivered the village of Prevista on the Strymon to the monastery of Zographou. Within the text of the act there is a portion of the chrysobull ordering this transfer: besides granting Zographou Prevista, the emperor added that

(translating the text literally) "since this monastery held a paroikos named Michael, [son] of Daniel, my imperium orders that although he earlier was enrolled militarily, he should be discharged again and held and enjoyed by this monastery along with his brothers, as well as with the paroikos that he himself held, the soldier John Savvas" and a certain Smoleos. So Apelmene declared that he was now giving Zographou the village of Prevista and

"along with this we discharge Michael, [son] of Daniel, who earlier was enrolled militarily, and we

give him to the monastery along with his brothers, as well as the paroikos that Daniel himself held, John Savvas" and Smoleos and the proskatheme- nos George of Niketas.'2 Since some scholars have

suggested that we may be in the presence of the

peasant soldier or the smallholding pronoia soldier,'3 this text deserves careful attention.

First of all, F. D61lger has pointed out the diplo- matic problems with the document. Apelmene's act itself bears the date "March indiction 2," while the inserted chrysobull is dated "April indiction 2." Thus, there is an error either in one of the months or in one of the indiction years. As for the date, the indiction year 2, repeated three times in the entire document, was thought by S. Kyriakides to

correspond to the year 1348/9, but D61lger argued that if the document is genuine and was issued in 1348/9, then it almost certainly should mention Andronikos II's chrysobull of 1325 confirming Zo-

graphou's possession of Prevista at the request of Michael Asen of Bulgaria.'4 For his own part D6l- ger, unsatisfied with the year 1318/9 suggested by Regel, preferred 1323/4, a date basically without foundation.15 More recently Lj. Maksimovid proposed the date 1274, basing this on the document's reference to a gramma of an anonymous sevastokrator. While the absence of an appropriate sevastokrator in the first half of the fourteenth century led Kyriakides to advance the date, Maksimovid identifies this sevastokrator as Constantine Tor- nikes, present in some thirteenth-century documents from the Zographou dossier.'6 This is a possibility, but we must ask why a 1289 chrysobull for

Zographou (Zographou, no. 11), confirming its possessions including those on the Strymon, does not mention Prevista.

Furthermore, there are prosopographical problems. None of the persons mentioned in the act is known from any other published source. While the apographeus of the theme of Thessaloniki, De- metrios Apelmene, is well known from the turn of the fourteenth century, no doux "John" Apelmene is otherwise attested. These considerations, along with the general nature of the act, do nothing to

allay the suspicion that the document is a falsification intended to legitimize Zographou's possession of a group of peasants. But regardless of whether

Apelmene's act or the chrysobull inserted within it is genuine, the information that they contain should be based on a certain reality, if only in re-

gard to the social and institutional structures sug-

their lands were confiscated and redistributed as pronoia. Be- cause of this ambiguity, I will not deal with the fate of the highlanders during the post-Nikaian era here. On the Chadenos affair, see Oikonomidbs, "Compagnies," 359-60; M. Angold, A Byzantine Government in Exile (London, 1975), 125, 195-96; Mu- taffiev, "Vojnigki," 596; Arnakis, "Byzantium's Anatolian Prov- inces," 40-41; Charanis, "Social Structure," 133; P. Charanis, "The Monastic Properties and the State in the Byzantine Em- pire," DOP 4 (1948), 110; H. Ahrweiler, "La concession des droits incorporels," Actes du XIIe Congres international d'itudes byzantines (Belgrade, 1964), II, 103-14, repr. in Ahrweiler, Etudes sur les structures administratives et sociales de Byzance (London, 1971), no. I, 111 note 48; and D. Jacoby in BZ 73 (1980), 89.

2W. Regel, E. Kurtz, and B. Korablev, Actes de Zographou, I: Actes greces, VizVrem 13 (1907), suppl. 1, no. 16, lines 20-26: bet 6U xcdt 3dQoLxov E XElev i TLota~tr iovX kEy6R1Evov MLXWCt X 6v Toi AaVL•X, 6LtoQECtEat af LPaoLXCLa Rov, Et xat 4OaoE OTgaOrEV- Oeval, &n3oo~TQaLaTcevat 3UdXk Xat xCatxeOaLat xat vLEoOGat 3a0C TETg otatOLbTg ovig etR ET& v aT6Vta6ct&X(v aCntoi, &Xkka 68h xat t6v 3UdQotLov, OV XaTELXEv 6 a6t6g, oTQaTL(bTTrl 'IodvvlIy tOv IdpPaV, dar?0Ctog xcd t v y 46Xeov oTLS V hl TCOgS etg t6

tQL[.]v[.]QL[.], and lines 35-41: dkka 86~ xcat Tv MLXCaLh T6v too IAaVLtkj, ortg E6OaCoE oa QaCEUvOiva, noo0QaretooEv xat ntacgaQoC(8O~ aCtEbv nUQbg t6 TO p oog rig TotaWtril OE(ag xat

oEpcEaol(agc iovfg ••eT tO)v &b•ekXG)v acftof, &kkd 86 xatc tv 6d- QOLXOV, 8y xaaFXeyv 6 aatobg AavLlk, 'Iodvvqrlv tv IXd[pav. boaYttiOg naoQa(861o Lt xcat tv OV6keov tbv 6vta EiLg t tQL[.]v[..]Q[..], 6[LOClog xatc tv Fc6)pytov tooW NtxMta, tbv nuQoo-

xa?1tevov ESg Tro0I T 6Xrl (hereafter Zographou). '3A. Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine

Empire (Princeton, 1977), 143-44; B. Ferjantid, "Quelques significations du mot stratiote dans les chartes de basse Byzance," ZRVI 21 (1982), 98-99; Oikonomides, "Compagnies," 357 note 36.

14S. Kyriakides, BuVavTLva iehtcratL, II-V (Thessaloniki, 1937), 86-88; F. Dl1ger, Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostrim- ischen Reiches (Munich, 1924-65), no. 2509; Zographou, no. 23 (1325).

15D1lger, Regesten, no. 2509, thought a scribe may have mis- read "indiction 12" as "indiction 2," but then D61ger miscalcu- lated the world-year. Indiction 12 is not 1323/4 but, e.g., 1313/ 4 or 1328/9.

16Lj. MaksimoviC, Byzantine Provincial Administration under the

Palaiologoi (Amsterdam, 1988), 109 note 20.


gested by the act. Therefore the document, even if a falsification, cannot be dismissed out of hand.

But there are problems even within the portion of the text of interest to us. The passage from the inserted chrysobull, "the paroikos that he himself held, the soldier John Savvas," literally describing a situation in which a soldier possessed a paroikos who was a soldier, is completely without parallel. A

simple alteration of the text may be in order: "the paroikos that the soldier himself held, John Savvas" (T6v td6gotxov, 6v uXITEXEv 6 0 aTbg orTQaTzi rg, 'Indvviqv 6v I3dpp3av). But even this is unsatisfactory, for Michael is now being termed both paroikos and soldier in a single sentence of the chrysobull, juridically jejune if the intention of the document was to change Michael's status.

Further, in regard to the terminology utilized in the document, P. Lemerle has warned us that the verbs ogca~Temi and a&noorgaT~utc (enr6ler and de- mobiliser) ought not always be taken literally. He has shown this convincingly in respect to the 1089 act exchanging the lands of the monk Christodou- los on Kos for new lands on Patmos. In this act the apographeus Kopsenos was ordered to

anoo-0ra- TrEEt1V "whoever 'was earlier enrolled' (E4#ao ... oTgaTEJoat) up to this time on the isle of Patmos" and to orTaQCrtTv "anew those on the lands on Kos, which now return to the state through exchange with the said monk." " Lemerle's interpretation is that the peasants in question on Patmos were to be relieved of their fiscal obligations toward the state, but only to have them transferred to the new monastery, while those peasants on Kos would no longer render their telos and other burdens toward a private landowner, but toward the state.18 That the text has nothing to do with military obligations is clear from the list of peasants that Kopsenos says &tFoTgaeCToaeLtv. While most are men with families, one entry is "The widow Kyriake, having a grandson Niketas."' 9

The use of such military terminology evidently had its origins in a more or less gradual process whereby middle Byzantine peasants commuted their hereditary military obligations, burdening

either them or their property, for a payment. As late as the eleventh century, the sense of a real military obligation is still occasionally seen. Thus, one monastery was fortunate enough to receive a grant of "tax-free" (ateleis) paroikoi released from all burdens and military duties (stratiotikon leitour- gima), which meant that it could now demand greater rents and services from such paroikoi.20 But by the thirteenth century such "military burdens" generally seem to have become simply another category of fiscal obligation levied upon the dependent peasantry. We see this in the predomi- nance of such phrases as T" ogatatciTx• CnjqtirtutaT ... kka 6X1 xatT 68'tO Lootax& xE)dkata, TFtko-

[tdTyzv 8'?tooltax6v ze xat oGiQawati0Lx6v, and xe- )aka(ov •Pathtikxb6

xcat o'rg'QatLzox6v.21 In the late period certain phrases do appear that

parallel the verbs oz(gaTmico and &noogTaQ•EieO

in the act of John Apelmene. In 1321 Andronikos II granted the village of Soucha

[tetd 1Tv v aiTci &Yo-

TQaTceayTcv B•dyov to the church of Ioannina.22 Did this mean that the Vlachs now simply ren- dered their telos and other obligations to the church of Ioannina, or should we see some kind of actual military service that Vlachs normally owed? Unfortunately our knowledge of the status of Vlachs in this period is thoroughly nebulous, and it is difficult to draw parallels with other peasants because, at the very least, we know that the medieval Serbian kingdom reckoned this ethnic group in a separate and distinct legal category.23

A much closer parallel to Apelmene's act is found in a patriarchal decree confirming a donation made by a certain Megas Konostaulos in the vicinity of Sozopolis. The act bears no date, but J. Darrouzes places it within the patriarchate of John Kosmas (1294-1303) or perhaps Isaias (1323-32). In the document the patriarch speaks of the duties of this particular Megas Konostaulos: " .. govern-

17M. Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou, BvuavTtvO FyyaQcocoa 1g Rovlg Hd-r6Tov, II (Athens, 1980), no. 54, lines 10-11 (1089): anoogTQozTE1ioEg oovg &cv 0aooCgL xacrd & v unvot xCatQbv ?v T1 v~o(o Tl Hdx•T orgcaTre oatt, ogatQrC ovg 6i ... (hereafter Patmos II).

18 P. Lemerle, The Agrarian History of Byzantium (Galway, 1979), 226-28. D61ger, Regesten, no. 1153, and D. Xanalatos, Beitriige zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Makedoniens im Mittelalter (Speyer, 1937), 44, offer the literal military interpretations.

19Patmos II, no. 54, lines 15-21.

20 F. Miklosich and J. Mfiller, Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana, 6 vols. (Vienna, 1860-90), V, 7, lines 12-14 (1051) (hereafter MM), cited by Xanalatos,

Beitrage, 45.

21MM IV, 86, lines 10-13 (1283); VI, 212, line 20 (1262); IV, 94, line 9 (1280). See also Angold, Byzantine Government, 223.

22 MM V, 87, line 5 (1321); Dolger, Regesten, no. 2460. 23 On this, see F. Taranovski, Istorija srpskog prava u Nemanjiekoj

driavi, 3 vols. (Belgrade, 1931-35), I, 71-76, and more recently, M. Blagojevi", "Zakon svetoga Simeona i svetoga Save," Zbornik radova za medjunarodnog skupa "Sava Nemanjif--sveti Sava, istorija i predanje" (Belgrade, 1979), 144-57. Portions of the so-called "Vlach Law," compiled during the latter 12th and 13th centuries, are preserved in two 14th-century Serbian chrysobulls: S. Novakovik, Zakonski spomenici srpskih driava srednjega veka (Bel- grade, 1912), 629, lxxxvii ff and 701, ccii ff ( = A. Solovjev, Odabrani spomenici srpskog prava [Belgrade, 1926], 96-97 and 142).

6 MARK C. BARTUSIS

ing and administering all the rights (dikaia) of the West, he is assigned and ordered by my most

mighty and holy emperor to ToiUg &V yv 6ui

oTQgaTCEag n;otLv, o-,g ;T'ac r nu tv trbn orgaTayT(av

T(•OEG•ca." 24 The key term strateia has a long history

and numerous meanings. For example, it appears in Michael VIII's prostagma of 1272 for his son Andronikos with the indisputable sense of a soldier's military responsibilities; on the other hand, in 1274 Michael ordered the inhabitants of Vare to

repay the Lemviotissa monastery fifty-five hyperpyra that they owed the monastery for the sake of their strateia.25 Thus, at nearly the same moment

imperial documents speak of strateia as both mili-

tary service and a fiscal obligation. Since the other duties of the Megas Konostaulos

in the patriarchal decree are entirely devoid of any military tone, as is the rest of the document, I think P. Lemerle (Agrarian History, 228 note 2) is correct in suggesting that the act is speaking only about juridical and fiscal responsibilities. A possible translation of the passage is that the Megas Konostaulos in the course of his duties was ordered by the emperor "to make some people free of fiscal obligations [for the benefit of monasteries or other landowners] and to put others back again under a fiscal obligation." On the whole, of course, no late Byzantine peasant-no more than the

peasants on Patmos and Kos in the act of 1089- was ever "freed" of his fiscal obligations. The telos and other charges and burdens owed by the late

Byzantine peasant might no longer be demanded

by the fisc, but they would then, perfectly legally, be demanded by a landowner or a pronoiar. The first of these recipients was usually a monastery or an individual who was granted these peasants as a

special mark of imperial beneficence or as a special reward for extraordinary service. Such individuals were not really pronoiars because the grant was not conditional upon a further obligation of service, and such grants, because of their exceptional nature, would probably not normally be included within a formal definition of the competency of a

provincial official such as the Megas Konostaulos

in the patriarchal decree. However, local officials most likely played an important part in the procedure of delineating and administering common grants of pronoia, that is, ncagad6oe~g na;Qo(cxv

QQg g oTQalC•lTag.26 Thus, part of the local official's responsibility-we are probably speaking of a ke- phale-would have been to "pronoiarize" and "de- pronoiarize" lands and paroikoi, in other words, to give their revenues to pronoiars and to take them away from pronoiars (rQ6g ot~utWirrLCag T66YvauL and &W;0 o'GaT-riwr6v antoonGdTv). I wonder whether this is the meaning of John Apelmene's act. Per- haps the monks of Zographou were claiming that Michael, along with his labor and tax obligations, had been unjustly "pronoiarized" (@tQovo(aoOat, orQaUThiOO1at, tE6b orgaTELayv OTCOoOat, tQObg o-rgaumCrag o60o0at), and the purpose of Apel- mene's act was to "de-pronoiarize" him (C&Coo?ra- TheEoMan, GnT orgaTlcag nEolLo-aGO),27 that is, to

take the revenues owed by Michael out of the hands of a pronoiar and to give them to a non- pronoiar, the monastery of Zographou. Possibly no one mentioned by name in the document was or ever had been a soldier of any kind.

While it may be freely acknowledged that this hypothetical interpretation does not satisfactorily explain every relevant aspect of John Apelmene's act, neither does the interpretation that Michael had been a smallholding soldier ("peasant soldier") or a petty pronoia soldier. It is, however, necessary to conclude that there is insufficient justification to use this Michael, son of Daniel, as an example of a

smallholding soldier or a smallholding pronoiar. (3) Lavra's 1321 praktikon mentions a certain

paroikos of the monastery, "John Kaseidares, that is, the Stratiotes" ('ICdwvvig 6 KacGEtidqg -rot 6

oTQzacr Trqg), who lived with his family in Kala- maria and owed Lavra a telos of four hyperpyra. It has been suggested that Kaseidares may once have been a free peasant and soldier who had fallen

upon hard times.28 This is a possibility, though it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the evi-

24C. Astruc, "Un acte patriarcal inedit de l'6poque des Pal6o- logues," Annuaire de l'Institut de philologie et d'histoire orientales et slaves 12 (Brussels, 1952), 22, lines 2-5; J. Darrouzes, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, I: Les actes des patriarches, fasc. 5 (Paris, 1977), no. 2167.

25A. Heisenberg, Aus der Geschichte und Literatur der Palaiolo- genzeit, SBMiinch, Philos.-philol.Kl., Abh. 10 (Munich, 1920), repr. in Heisenberg, Quellen und Studien zur spiitbyzantinischen Geschichte (London, 1973), 40, line 82, and 41, line 93; MM IV, 256, lines 5-9 (1274). Angold, Byzantine Government, 195.

26N. Oikonomides, "Contribution ai l'atude de la pronoia au XIIIe sibcle," REB 22 (1964), repr. in Oikonomides, Documents et itudes sur les institutions de Byzance (London, 1976), no. VI, 173, offers a possible reconstruction of this procedure in the 13th century.

27 For the verb ngovoLd•o, see V. Mosin, "Akti iz svetogorskih arhiva," Spomenik Srpske kraljevske akademije nauka 91 (1939), 165; Patmos II, no. 61, line 39; and P. Lemerle, A. Guillou, N. Svo- ronos, and D. Papachryssanthou, Actes de Lavra I-IV (Paris, 1970-82), IV, pp. 52-53 (hereafter Lavra).

28Lavra II, no. 109, lines 157-58; Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 140, 144 and note 4; Ferjanfih, "Quelques significations," 101; PLP, no. 11326.


dence of names or epithets. If "Stratiotes," attested elsewhere as a paroikos surname,29 should suggest to us that the paroikos had once been a soldier, what should we think of paroikoi with names like "Nicholas, called Sevastos" (Nix6Xaog 6 he'y6etvog e(f3aot6g) and "John Caesar" ('Icdvvrg' 6

KaCoag)?30 But even if John Kaseidares had been a soldier, he could just as well have been a mercenary rather than a smallholding soldier.

(4) In 1348 Stefan Dugan issued a chrysobull that returned the village of Zavlantia and its paroikoi to the monastery of Hagios Georgios. Accord- ing to the text, sometime between 1342 and 1348 the ruler of Thessaly, John Angelos,3' had taken Zavlantia from the monastery. The passage of interest to us reads: ". . . [the monastery] held and enjoyed it [i.e., the village] before the said deceased Sevastokrator John took it away; that is, the paroikoi from those found in it were set in the order of soldiers" (xaObog x6tdt xcat vLtLETo acT6O gTQb 6of, ~Mnood6oaut rorTo 6 6fo' O•ig oLI3aoTo-

XQdT(•g ELevog, yYOUyv toiJg &6 -Trw v t' T C ei- Q1OXOdt•vV UaQOLCOxovg xat ds; zr~v ozrganOtwO-v

d•xoxatozatgvovg).32 Nearly every scholar offer- ing an opinion on this document has concluded that the paroikoi became soldiers, and B. Ferjan- cid, in particular, has suggested specifically that they became smallholding peasant soldiers.3 Yet it is difficult to be sure about this.

First, Dugan was returning more than paroikoi to the monastery. The document lists ten men, as well as a number of escheated holdings: "Kat- zounes, Ivanes, Gorgos, Kapeletos, Rodeses, Gla- vas, Petritzas, Armparikes, Domvrilas and Con- stantine son of Stephan, and the exaleimmatika

stasia of the two brothers Lipavades and Xakitres, of Vranas, of the Kynegoi, of Allelouia, of Armen- ochorites and of Vratos." Dugan ordered that the monastery "shall enjoy both the said paroikoi by name and the holdings" (xau vt W[IGat oaOg mT

rlvC00tVTag Mago(xovg xaT' 6vo[ta xat -rd orao(a), and later he repeats that by the authority of his chrysobull "the monastery holds and enjoys . . the said village along with those from the paroikoi set in the order of soldiers by the deceased Sevas- tokrator kyr John, as was said, and [with] the holdings...."34 If the Sevastokrator John had made these paroikoi soldiers, then we are observing two separate acts: the confiscation of lands and the en- rollment of monastic paroikoi into the army.

Second, the key phrase, "those from the paroikoi set in the order of soldiers," is very peculiar, and the construction gEig Tdvy oQcgat••CTv

is a ha- pax with a meaning that is far from obvious. On the other hand, the phrase JI yf

.?.. ? oOEou (abg

toig otrTarTLCrcag, or some variation, was the common way of referring to a frequent occurrence, giving land in pronoia to pronoiars (stratiotai). Both lay and monastic praktika mention, as here, first the paroikoi assigned to the landlord and fol- low this with, again as here, a list of lands including exaleimmata. It is possible, as I. Sevienko once suggested,35 that the paroikoi and exaleimmatika stasia of the village of Zavlantia had been taken away from the monastery and given to pronoiars, and that these paroikoi, far from becoming soldiers, found themselves literally "under the system of pronoiars (or pronoia soldiers)." Perhaps the ap- pearance of the phrase eSg Tbd?v ogaTQCCTcT can be attributed to nothing more than the poor knowledge that the text's Serbian or Thessalian au- thor had of Byzantine legal terminology.36

By no means have I proven that this 1348 chrysobull involved merely a common disagreement between pronoiars and a monastery. I have only tried to demonstrate that there are sufficient grounds to question whether the paroikoi mentioned in the document had been transformed into soldiers, and, consequently, that the document cannot be used as evidence of this phenomenon. Further, even if we grant that these paroikoi did in

29Patmos II, no. 75, line ty' (1288). 30D. Papachryssanthou, Actes de Xenophon (Paris, 1986), no.

25, line 103 (hereafter Xgnophon); Lavra II, no. 109, line 786. This is particularly problematic when these names or epithets are well established, "old" words, such as "stratiotes," as opposed to more recently created "new" words such as Gasmoulos, Thelematarios, and Prosalentes (for the latter two, see below).

3 B. Ferjan:id, "Sevastokratori u Vizantiji," ZRVI 11 (1968),

184-85, and idem, Tesalija u XIII i XIV veku (Belgrade, 1974), 223-25, has adequately demonstrated that the "Sevastokrator John" of the following document is John Angelos, a relative of Kantakouzenos, appointed governor of Thessaly in 1342. PLP, no. 208, repeats the older opinion that the document refers to John I Angelos, ruler of Thessaly from 1266/7 until before March 1289.

1 A. Solovjev and V. Mo'in, Greke povelje srpskih vladara (Bel- grade, 1936), no. 21, lines 18-21.

3 For example, Mutaffiev, "Vojnivki," 530-31; Dl1ger in BZ 26 (1926), 102-13; Solovjev and Movin, Povelje, pp. 162 and 494; Charanis, "Monastic Properties," 112; Ostrogorskij, Fgodal- its, 158; and Ferjancic, Tesalija, 222-24 and 234-35, "Sevasto- kratori," 184-85, and "Quelques significations," 99.

34Solovjev and Mogin, Povelje, no. 21, lines 21-29 and 35-39. On exaleimmata, see M. Bartusis,

"'EdXELtctta: Escheat in Byzan-

tium," DOP 41 (1986), 55-81. 51 . Sevvenko, "Nicolas Cabasilas' 'Anti-Zealot' Discourse,"

DOP 11 (1957), 158 note 132. 36The sentence construction in this document (pace Solovjev

and Movin, Povelje, p. xcix), for example, in lines 18-19, is ter- rible.

8 MARK C. BARTUSIS

fact become soldiers, we still could not conclude that they became smallholding soldiers. They may have become mercenaries with no attachment to land whatsoever.

(5) Even when it is clear that a source is dealing with soldiers, it is frequently impossible to determine what kind of soldier is meant. In a well- known example, Pachymeres writes that Androni- kos II contemplated drastic action when faced with

increasing Turkish advances in Anatolia around 1300: "Because of these things it appeared neces-

sary to take the one measure still remaining: to re- lease from the overlords however much was given in pronoia to the monasteries, the churches, and the imperial entourage, [and] to assign everything-including even the lands attached to single monks' cells-to soldiers, so that they would stay and defend their own." 37

Even though the patriarch did not oppose the

plan, Pachymeres notes that because of the admin- istrative breakdown in Anatolia and the flight of the population, it was never realized. On the one hand, it has been said that Andronikos was planning to distribute all of these properties as land

grants to soldiers;38 on the other hand, he could have been planning a transfer of pronoiai from one set of landlords to another, in this case, pronoia soldiers. Either plan would have created more soldiers with a better reason to stay and fight. This case, then, cannot be used as an example of the institution of smallholding soldiers.

(6) According to an inscription from Mistra, at some time between 1312 and 1320, six hundred modioi of land were given to the monastery of Vrontochiou in exchange for an unspecified quantity of land in the neighboring mountain range that had been "given to soldiers" (xa& 8uoO'Eoig [later: naQa6oOsfoCgg] tQ6bg oGaTQTL0cag). D. Zaky- thinos regarded this as proof that the mountains around Mistra were being settled with soldiers; more recently, B. Ferjancik has seen the "peasant soldier" in this passage. Neither scholar can be

proved wrong. Indeed, whoever received land on a mountain was probably not the most privileged of individuals. Nevertheless, the passage could just as well be speaking of a couple of parcels of land

that pronoia soldiers were holding as part of their oikonomiai.39

(7) The 1342 gramma of Michael Gavrielopoulos, the semi-independent governor of Thessaly, granted a number of privileges to the inhabitants of the kastron of Phanarion. Predominant among them was his promise that "whatever soldiers there were, or shall be, shall continue to give military service, and I shall not demand the other from them, this is, tzakoniki guard [service]." He added, "nor shall I ask all those same Phanariotai on campaign at any time for three years. After the completion of the three years, they shall give military service and not the other, that is, tzakoniki [service]."'40 Thus, while the soldiers (stratiotai) of Phanarion were still obligated to continue performing mili-

tary service, they were exempted specifically from

guard service entirely and from campaign service for the first three years after the promulgation of

Gavrielopoulos' act. After this period their military service would include campaign duty.

B. Ferjankid has viewed the stratiotai in this document as smallholding soldiers.41 His argument is based on the phrasing of the first lines of the document, that read, with Miklosich and Muiller's res- torations, 'EmL[bt c &aLTOV]OL T~ avTt [Oavel o0

&]QXovTEg DavaQLWtatL, Lttovg TE xat tlLXQoL,

[xoo•tLxot xat] XXhtQLXOl, XQVoojoVXkkdTOL xat o-

xovodToL, Othog noQLoCovaL [yQdtwa j1g au'Ov-

?TCag [tov ... &v Q ... ] E)Q(oX•0VaL 4 ILvEg E- Q(oxovTo orGQaLOTaL ... , and so on. Despite the several lacunae, FerjanidC has seen three levels of Phanariotai here (the greater and lesser archons, and the stratiotai), from which he concludes that the stratiotai, since they were not archons, were therefore not pronoiars, but smallholding soldiers. However, I see no way to make a direct connection between the word "stratiotai" in the document and the list of archons at the beginning of the document. The word "stratiotai" quite simply appears

"7Pachymeres, Bonn ed., II, 390.2-7; trans. adapted from A. Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 119, and E. Fisher, "A Note on Pachymeres' 'De Andronico Pa-

laeologo,'" Byzantion 40 (1970), 233. See also the comments of I. Sevvenko, Society and Intellectual Life in Late Byzantium (Lon- don, 1981), addenda, p. 2.

38For example, by Mutaffiev, "Vojnivki," 528, and Charanis, "Monastic Properties," 111.

39G. Millet, "Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra," BCH 23 (1899), pp. 112-14, no. 4, lines 6-9 and 17; Dl1ger, Regesten, no. 2438; D. Zakythinos, Le despotat grec de Morde, 2 vols. (Paris, 1932, Athens, 1953; rev. ed. by Ch. Maltezou, London, 1975), II, 134; FerjanEid, "Quelques significations," 101. The verb

•0Clb t is used regularly in documents that speak of the transfer of pronoia to "stratiotai."

40MM V, 260, lines 20-22. On the date, see N. Bees in BZ 21 (1912), 170 note 1. On this document and on tzakoniki service, see M. Bartusis, "Urban Guard Service in Late Byzantium and Medieval Serbia: The Terminology and the Institution," Mace- donian Studies (forthcoming).

41Ferjan6i', Tesalija, 183-89, and idem, "Quelques significations," 99-100. Charanis, "Social Structure," 118 and 123, also

suggested these stratiotai were smallholding soldiers.


in a different clause, no matter how one restores the lacunae. Thus, I would paraphrase the open- ing as "Since the archons of Phanarion request that they receive a letter from me [that] if any stratiotai are present, they shall give military service and not guard service." Further, our growing knowledge of the institution of collective pronoia suggests that some pronoia soldiers, such as the Klazomenitai of Serres, may not ever have been considered archons.42 On the whole, I think it very likely that the stratiotai of Phanarion were pronoiars, but we really do not know.43 In any event, we cannot use this case as an example of small-

holding soldiers. (8) According to a synodal decision from 1367,

John V's uncle, the monk Antonios Glavas Tarcha- neiotes, had informed the patriarch that same year that the emperor was planning "to establish soldiers in the villages outside of Constantinople up to Selyvria and to give them the fields in them and all the land in them." But as for two villages in this area that the Church itself held, named Oikon- omeiou and Paspara, Antonikos stated that the

emperor "will hold these for a year, and if he ac-

complishes what he intends, he shall continue to hold them and give the Church another income

equal to that of these properties; but if he does not

accomplish what he wishes, these [properties] will be returned to it [i.e., the Church]." Nevertheless, the patriarch refused to agree to the plan, forcing the monk Antonios to offer another suggestion on behalf of John V: "Since you [i.e., the synod] will not give up these [villages] to him [i.e., the em-

peror], lease them so that he may hold [them] as others hold [them], and sow in them and render the mortj to the Church."44 The patriarch and an assembled synod still refused to acquiesce to this

action. There is no evidence that John V, who seems to have had his own doubts about the suc- cessful prospects of the plan,45 actually carried out

any aspect of the scheme. In fact, seventeen years later, one of the villages in question was still in the

possession of the Church, although it was nearly deserted.46

Even though the proposed system of land tenure for these soldiers is ambiguous, the conclusion in the scholarship is more or less unanimous that

John V was planning to settle smallholding soldiers in the villages between Constantinople and Sely- vria.47 This is possible, but there are a number of

problems with this interpretation. Nothing in the document suggests unequivocally that the soldiers were to inhabit the area mentioned; rather, they were to be "established" there (using the vague verb xacLtCorqt) and "given" the land (using the

equally vague i&(oCot). Moreover, the most trouble-

some aspect of seeing this as a proposal to settle

smallholding soldiers is the reference to a one-year trial period in the first plan. If soldiers were settled and matters did not work out, were they then to be

uprooted, and either discharged or sent elsewhere? Assuming the area involved was more or less uncultivated at the time of the proposal (since there would be no point in driving out productive peasants), would it not be absurd to expect new settlers, whether or not they were soldiers, to break even, much less show a profit, in one year's time? Such a short trial period would better accommo- date a paper transaction, that is, the shift of revenues (prosodoi) from one group to another, from the Church to pronoiars. While further analysis of the document could explore the patriarch's canon- ical objections to the plans, the references to the morte (vis-i-vis the telos), and the economic advan- tages and disadvantages of each of the plans to the state, the Church, and the proposed soldiers in the overall balance sheet, one fact would still remain: we simply do not know enough about the conditions of the soldiers' anticipated tenure of these lands in order to use the case as an example of a plan to create smallholding soldiers.

Finally, B. Ferjan&iC has identified, more or less tentatively, a few other men found in the documentary sources as smallholding soldiers. He has

42On collective pronoia and the Klazomenitai, see Oikonom- ides, "Compagnies," 363-64 and 367-69. Cf. Laiou- Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 142-43.

43 K. Kyrris, "The Social Status of the Archontes of Phanari in Thessaly (1342)," Hellenika 18 (1964), 74, concluded that they were pronoiars, but for odd reasons.

44MM I, 507, lines 15-18: ... 6TL 6 PaCELXEIg 6 a&yLOg po~AeaE xa XaoTLToaT oM aTcLLTag 'v coLg XTaL&otg iV TOE Tgi KwvoravrTvovuT6XEog ~tXQL t g ZquPQ(acg, o1g xat

po1•XETaL ovat d L Tv aETOgS (X)Qd?tLa xat zTy y?v nTdoav 'riv v aE Urog,,

and 22-25: xa X ,tXELV

y4Q t•hXEL Taftra Xtt•L XQ6voIv v6g, xaci

El FAYV tOLOEL, O"T8@Q PO1OkETCL,, XCEOSEL TCOfTCL xCE EiOATL xcE 6GEL T~ i xx rlo91( qtEav nQ6ao060ov, 'oLlg TOC• XT ?iCGOL TOtTOLg,

EL &A O1 JTOLOGEL, OJTEQ •O1)XETGcL, avTLOMTQGctMOQOVTL TOT Ctict YQbg acriv. MM I, 508, lines 13-17: et oi Mt6aTE TCat tc JTQg cti- r6v, 86TE TCEiTCa, Lva X•TtX (oTEQ X•T~tXOvLY ETEQOL xcE oJU(l- Qovov LV

aEVoCTOLg xa ML Co 6ao lv lOV LogQTVng 1Q v lV ExxXkl-

lav. .. . For the location of Oikonomeiou, see the map in Lavra IV, p. 121.

45 See Charanis, "Monastic Properties," 115. 46 MM II, 62, cited by Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 218. 47See Ferjan'i', "Quelques significations," 100-101; Dblger,

Regesten, no. 3118; H. Schmid, "Byzantinisches Zehntwesen," JOB 6 (1957), 63-64; Charanis, "Monastic Properties," 114-15; Mutaffiev, "Vojnivki," 528.

10 MARK C. BARTUSIS

suggested that the "Thessalonikan soldiers" who donated exaleimmatika stasia to Xenophon sometime before 1338, because of their anonymity and the apparently small sizes of the stasia, were possibly smallholding soldiers.48 Yet, all sorts of people donated exaleimmata to monasteries, and, in any event, the Thessalonikan soldiers must have possessed other means of support; otherwise, their donation would have left them paupers. Ferjanci~c has also suggested that the anonymous soldier who had held a zeugilateion that later appears in Chilan- dar's possession may have been a smallholding soldier, as well as two stratiotai, Makros and Jacob, who appear as landowners in the region of Para- polia near Constantinople in 1334.49 All three of these men could have been smallholding soldiers; they could just as well have been pronoia soldiers, or even mercenaries that held some property. There is not enough information on which to base conclusions.

It is quite possible that some of the texts cited above may in fact be dealing with smallholding soldiers. And many more examples could be added. For example, a 1285 praktikon for the Patmos

monastery's possessions on Lemnos refers to a

piece of land located "near the thing given to the soldiers" (7tkiloov TOb 6oOtv toeg oTQa•Td)Latg).50

Is the subject smallholding or pronoia soldiers? My guess is pronoia, but as with most of the examples cited above, we really do not know. Even in cases where much more information is provided, conclusions are inappropriate. For instance, we know that the Cretan cavalry settled in Anatolia in the last third of the thirteenth century were mercenaries, but were the lands on which they lived held on condition of military service?51 Or were the two Christian Turks that Patriarch Gregory of Cyprus writes about, who lost their "pronoia" in the 1280s, and who were then given in return "arable land"

(gi arosimos) and enrolled in the "Persian military rolls," pronoiars who became smallholding sol-

diers?52 Our conclusions are circumscribed by the nature of our sources.

One very important episode in which it is almost certain that small holdings were distributed to soldiers is found in Kantakouzenos' account (I, 164. 22 if) of the negotiations before the treaty of Epi- vatai in 1322. At the time Andronikos III informed his grandfather that "increasing the pay of the mercenaries of the army, I granted measures of land to each of ten gold pieces" (naptoxEov xat Yfig i xdoop mXtOpa XQvo(0v &xa), and added, "Concerning the increase in pay you yourself know it had to be done. As for the land, I plead with you not to deprive the soldiers of it, partly because no loss has come to the public revenues from this distribution, and partly because through its smallness the distribution seems a benefit affording no hin- drance to the soldiers in regard to their activity on

campaign." Kantakouzenos adds that, according to the terms of the treaty, the mercenaries were allowed to keep the land: "The land provided to those mercenaries was not to be bothered by those

managing the dimosia [i.e., tax officials], but it should be retained by them free of exactions" (I, 167.7-10).

There are at least three distinct ways to interpret this episode depending on how the phrase "measures of land of ten gold pieces" is to be construed. P. Mutaffiev ("Vojniski," 525 note 22 and 527) maintained that Andronikos III had granted his mercenaries parcels of arable land with a value of ten hyperpyra each. V. Parisot wrote that the mercenaries had received property with an economic revenue of ten hyperpyra.53 More recently, N. Oi- konomides argued that the episode actually involved small grants of pronoiai, each yielding an annual fiscal revenue of ten hyperpyra.54 The first two possibilities speak of grants of land; the third,

grants of pronoiai. To attempt to decide among them we need to consider the key elements of the

48 Ferjan&i', "Quelques significations," 101. For more on this document, see the text to note 97 below.

49Ibid., 101. L. Petit, Actes de Chilandar, I: Actes grecs, VizVrem 17 (1911), suppl. 1, no. 41, lines 109-10 (1319): tEy'lXkatm(ov tot Mdkaxa, xazexoRtvo TotIOTov nTQ6TEQov TaQd oTgQaTLdTroU. MM V, 260-61; Lavra III, no. 122, lines 10-11 and 13; PLP, no. 7938.

50Patmos II, no. 74, line 17 (1285); D61ger, Regesten, no. 2359.

51Pachymeres, Bonn ed., II, 209.7-9: ... .n' &vatoXkg XaTOLX(oag xat '6yaLSg i'rlOtg 1Ot0OTETCoayL•tvaLg tExavWCov Og TLoTog ov a4dXOLg~ XQito. Mutafdiev, "Vojni'ki," 527, wrote

that the Cretan cavalry was an example of land given to mercenaries.

52"FQYoQ(olo Toft KvnQ(ov oLXOU[LEVLXO XgcTQLdQXOUZ 'EntoLokat xat Mf-0oL, ed. S. Eustratiades (Alexandria, 1910), p. 155, no. 159 (hereafter Eustratiades, Gregory). Cf. M. Bibi- kov, "Svedenija o pronii v pis'makh Grigorija Kiprskogo i 'Isto- rii' Georgija Pakhimera," ZRVI 17 (1976), 95.

53V. Parisot, Cantacuzene, homme d'etat et historien (Paris, 1845), 59: "chaque militaire devenu ... tenancier d'un immeuble lui donnant 10 pi&ces d'or de revenu." That Parisot had rents or harvest in mind when he spoke of "revenue" is clear from the clause immediately following that adds, incorrectly, "en restera nanti ' la seule condition de payer l'imp6t au fisc." Dblger, Re-

gesten, nos. 2479 and 2671, speaks of "Land mit einem Ertrag" of ten hyperpyra, an ambiguous phrase that similarly seems to

imply an economic yield rather than a value or fiscal assessment. 540ikonomides, "Compagnies," 358. Laiou, Constantinople,

290, in passing, also speaks of "pronoiai."


passages: (1) Kantakouzenos twice refers to the grants as consisting of gj, the normal fiscal term for arable land; (2) this "land" is quantified not by area but by a monetary description, "measures of ten gold pieces"; (3) the grants caused no loss to public revenues; (4) the grants were of a size suffi- ciently small so as not to interfere with the soldiers' military service; and (5) the land granted was exempt from taxation.

It is not difficult to construct a scenario that ac- cords with each of these elements and involves simple grants of land, each with a value of ten hyperpyra. We might envision each mercenary being granted, on a tax-exempt basis and for his personal cultivation, a small quantity of land (ten hyperpyra could purchase on average about sixteen modioi [1.6 hectares] of arable land 55) derived from state lands (or lands that had devolved to the state) not under cultivation at the time of the grant. Such a hypothetical arrangement fits each element of the scheme: "land" was involved; the grant, and its tax exemption, caused no loss to the fisc since it was not previously producing tax revenues anyway; and its small size (equivalent to about three soccer fields of arable land), suitable only for cultivation on a very modest scale, would not in- ordinately distract the mercenary from his military duties, should he choose to actually inhabit the property. If the "ten gold pieces" referred to an economic revenue, either simple rent or the total agricultural yield of the property, the scenario is more or less the same, except that the size of the property becomes larger. For comparison, a rent of ten hyperpyra required a property consisting of about one hundred modioi of arable land; a total economic yield of ten hyperpyra required about thirty-three modioi (see Lavra IV, 169 note 649).

For the grants to have involved pronoia, the scenario would be something along the following lines. Each mercenary received a grant of a fiscal revenue (posotis) of ten hyperpyra drawn from the telos of certain properties held by the fisc that were not in production before the grant, and for which the mercenary would find cultivators. Such a grant would not interfere seriously with the mercenary's service because he would not work the land himself, and, as N. Oikonomides has suggested, ten hyperpyra was such a small income that it would

require the mercenary to continue to rely on his mercenary salary.

It is clear that there are a number of serious difficulties in interpreting the process in terms of pronoia grants. First, we have to excuse Kanta- kouzenos' use of the word gi, which he never uses elsewhere in the context of soldiers or pronoia, and assume that he really meant "revenues" (prosodoi), the term he commonly employs for pronoia grants. Second, the only way a grant of pronoia could cause no loss of revenues to the fisc is if the properties involved were not producing tax revenues prior to the grant (as my scenario suggests). However, this would mean (as I further suggest) that the mercenary would need to arrange the production of the property, a task that indeed might interfere with his military duties, at least initially. (If, on the other hand, the properties were in production prior to the grant, there would be a loss of income to the fisc of ten hyperpyra per grant.) And third, there is a curious redundancy in Kan- takouzenos' statement that the lands were tax exempt, since by its nature the pronoia grant was a grant of taxes to a private party.

Nevertheless, the one major obstacle to conclud- ing that the grants were simply grants of land is the key phrase "measures of land of ten gold pieces," which appears to suggest a posotis, a quantity of fiscal revenues, not a valuation of land nor an economic return. The documentary sources or- dinarily quantify land in only two ways: by its area and by its fiscal assessment (generally a function of its area). Land "prices" are encountered much less frequently (and economic returns not at all) because their inherent fluctuations were of little use to the fisc in establishing the tax liability of a property. It would not be adequate to say simply that the grants were of arable land with a posotis of ten hyperpyra because, in order to produce ten hyperpyra of telos, each grant would need to amount to about five hundred modioi of average arable land (according to the usual fiscal assessment of one hy- perpyron per fifty modioi of arable land of mixed quality), which unquestionably would interfere with the soldiers' military duties.

Whatever was happening here is extremely important. Either mercenaries were receiving small quantities of land, making them hybrid mercenary-smallholding soldiers, or they were receiving small pronoiai, making them hybrid mercenary- pronoia soldiers. Both of these possibilities display creativity and subtlety in their approach to military financing. In my opinion, "simple grants of land

55Lavra IV, p. 158. Cf. G. Ostrogorsky, "L6hne und Preise in Byzanz," BZ 32 (1932), 313-14, and E. Schilbach, Byzantinische Metrologie (Munich, 1970), 252-53. For simplicity, I have used the equivalency 1 modios = 1,000 m2 throughout.

12 MARK C. BARTUSIS

with a value of ten hyperpyra" makes better sense in the passages than "grants of pronoia yielding ten hyperpyra yearly," but since this interpretation is not indisputable, I hesitate to use this episode as an example of furnishing mercenaries with small

holdings.

Nevertheless, there are a number of cases that

unquestionably involved smallholding soldiers. I would like to present them here, and then proceed to a characterization of the institution of small-

holding soldiers in late Byzantium.

Vatatzes' Cumans

Around 1239 a large group of Cumans, fleeing before the Mongols, crossed the Danube and in- vaded Thrace. There they pillaged and attacked the towns that had only recently come under Ni- kaian control until around 1242, when, according to Akropolites, John III Vatatzes responded to the situation and "with gifts and diplomacy made them over from a very savage to an obedient

people, and he drew them away from Macedonia

[actually, Thrace], and ferried them to the eastern

regions." In an enkomion to his father, Theodore II Laskaris refers to this episode: "Having removed the Scyth [sc. Cuman] from the West and the western lands, you led his race to the East as a

subject people and, substituting [them] for the sons of Persians, you have securely fettered their assaults toward the West." 56 Gregoras adds that Va- tatzes "enlisted them in the Roman armed forces, distributing lands to them for habitation (X600ag &XoL;g &hkkXg 8LavEtdtEvog Ei;g x aToX LOLV), some in Thrace and Macedonia, others in Asia throughout the Maiandros [valley] and Phrygia" (I, 37.6-

9), and soon afterward they received baptism. Thus, the Cumans became soldiers, and they

were given land for habitation, clearly indicating

that they were neither mercenaries nor pronoiars, but smallholding soldiers. On this, modern schol-

arship is in complete accord.57 The only question is where they were settled. We observe that Greg- oras says the Cumans were settled both in Asia and in Europe, whereas both Akropolites and Theo- dore II state that they were removed, respectively, from "Macedonia" (Akropolites uses the word "Macedonia" to include the Marica valley) and from the "West," and sent eastward. A passage from Akropolites suggests that Gregoras was mis- taken, that the Cumans who remained in Europe never served in the Nikaian army and that Nikaian authorities had very little control over them. Around 1255 a Nikaian force in Didymoteichon was given orders not to engage the Bulgarians "if indeed [the Bulgarians], taking Scyths [Cumans] in alliance, should rouse them against the enemies [the Nikaian forces]."'5 But later, when the Bulgar- ian ruler himself had induced the Cumans to in- vade and pillage Thrace, the generals in Didymo- teichon forgot their orders, left the town, and suffered a serious defeat in a battle that set heavily armed Nikaian cavalry against around four thousand Cuman archers (Akropolites, 125-26). Since

Akropolites notes that these Cumans passed by Adrianople (at that time on the Bulgaro-Nikaian frontier) on their way into Thrace, these Cumans must have lived on the frontier. Because of their

long association with the Bulgarians, there is little

possibility that they had been transformed into Ni- kaian troops of any kind; Akropolites clearly re-

garded them as a volatile element on the frontier.59

Thus, it would seem then that Vatatzes succeeded in transplanting only some of the Cumans to Asia. Once removed from the influence of the Bulgari- ans, they became reliable soldiers and obedient

subjects of the emperor. The rest remained in Eu-

rope and the most Vatatzes could do was restrict them to the Bulgarian frontier area, perhaps hop- ing that they might serve as a buffer against a Bul-

garian invasion.

According to Gregoras, the Cumans that went to 56Georgii Acropolitae Opera, ed. A. Heisenberg, I (Leipzig,

1903), 53-54 and 65 (hereafter Akropolites). F. I. Uspenskij, in ZMNP 225 (1883), 339: xat ydQ Tr6 tQv ?Vx NTi 61JTLXig xat TCOv 6V)tlXv XOY•? WooTd6oaC g 16v 0xZIi)0v, t fi• b Ev0a 8bo~ka d roto1ou yEvvfxRaTa ovvELGolyayEg, xat &vTakkdXag x9Xva 6I HeQ- otxd, O ECYLEg TOay1TOV Tlg LVTLoTdoELg b6g Tdg 8oCg&

o4akX6Ag (cited by Ostrogorskij, FHodalite, 62). The Cumans were not newcomers to the empire; they had served in the Byz- antine army since the reign of Alexios I Komnenos, and at the end of the 12th century some were settled in the Rhodope as pronoiars. See C. Asdracha, La rigion des Rhodopes aux XIIIe et XIVe siecles (Athens, 1976), 80-82, with bibliography; and also G. Ostrogorski, "Jog jednom o proniarima Kumanima," Zbornik Vladimira Movina (Belgrade, 1977), 63-74. For more references to Cumans, see Gy. Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1958), II, 167-68.

57E.g., see Ostrogorski, Pronija, 41 ( = Fgodalitg, 62); idem, History of the Byzantine State, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1969), 442; Charanis, "Social Structure," 133; Mutaffiev, "Vojni'ki," 556; Asdracha, Rhodopes, 81 and 242-43; Angold, Byzantine Government, 105; and J. Langdon, John III Ducas Va- tatzes' Byzantine Imperium in Anatolian Exile, dissertation, Univer-

sity of California, Los Angeles (Ann Arbor, 1979), 249-50.

58Akropolites, 123, lines 20-22: ... 3TOOEETETdXE Ebt al'og iib1' 6OXg Eig d6XqYV EyxaTacLtvacL Totg ntOXEi(OLg, ETEQ xaTd

to•t•tv 60[loaLEv, Exi00ag u~ook(Xa6vtEg ~ig ouRaaXCyv.

59Angold, Byzantine Government, 188-89, interprets these events to mean the Cumans "deserted to the Bulgarians."


Asia were settled in the Maiandros valley and in "Phrygia" (to Gregoras, this is the region to the east of Philadelpheia). If Gregoras' geography is accurate, then these Cumans lived in the highland frontiers, probably practicing the same mixture of agriculture and transhumance as the indigenous highlanders of Anatolia, and similarly serving as a buffer between Nikaian farmers and Turkish no- mads. On the other hand, two documents from 1270 or 1285 mention a community of Cumans who had been living outside Smyrna.60

The Cumans participated in the various Euro- pean campaigns of the Laskarid and Palaiologan emperors from 1242 through 1292.61 Presumably they were mustered out of their settlements for each campaign and afterward returned to them, though there is no evidence to support this.62

However, it requires little imagination to see that their usefulness lay in the fact that, as inhabitants of the empire, they were available for service on demand, and since they were an unsophisticated, war-loving people, evidently holding their settlements, at least ostensibly, on condition of military service, their participation in campaigns incurred little cost to the treasury.

In the fourteenth century a new group of Cu- mans arrived on the Byzantine scene. These were some two thousand Cuman soldiers, from Dalma- tia, lent to Michael IX by King Milutin of Serbia sometime between 1312 and 1320. After Michael IX's death in 1320, Milutin requested the return of these allied auxiliary troops, but in light of the im- minent civil war between the Andronikoi, this request was ignored.63 In the meantime the two thousand Cumans were settled in Thrace, but we

do not know on what terms.64 There is some evidence that these two thousand Cumans participated in the civil wars of the 1320s, perhaps on the side of Andronikos III. In December 1327, when the younger Andronikos assembled his army at Di- dymoteichon, Kantakouzenos reports that every- one appeared except for these Cumans because Andronikos II, fearing that they were plotting with the Mongols, had ordered that they be transplanted from Thrace to Lemnos, Thasos, and Les- vos.65 What became of them on these islands is not known. These Cumans, then, may have been smallholding soldiers, but we cannot say this with any certainty.

Thelematarioi

Immediately following the reconquest of Con- stantinople, Michael VIII created a number of groups of smallholding soldiers. One of these, called "Thelematarioi," were, like the Gasmouloi, products of the Byzantino-Latin interface. But unlike the Gasmouloi, the Thelematarioi were not the products of conjugal relations, but rather of necessary economic relations between Byzantines and Latins. According to Pachymeres:

There were some inhabitants from Chryseia and vicinity who, having loose convictions, were able to lean toward the Romans or toward the Italians, since the Romans put stock in their being Roman, while the Italians believed themselves safe from them because of their familiarity with them. They had no one else in whom to have faith. To banish these inhabitants might have brought on danger from [the area's] des- olation. Hence they were between the Romans and the Italians, and because of this they were called The- lematarioi, cultivating the land outside the City, living there and remaining free from both sides since both needed their affection so they would not be harmed.66

Thus, during the period of the Latin Empire, the Thelematarioi were free native farmers that lived around Constantinople and maintained their in- dependence by serving as middlemen in the eco-

60MM IV, 165-68; P. Charanis, "On the Ethnic Composition of Byzantine Asia Minor in the Thirteenth Century," HQoodoQdo Eg ET.. H. KvQLax(LrlV (Thessaloniki, 1953), 144-46; Angold, Byzantine Government, 105.

61Akropolites, 65-66, 139, 151, 169, and 182; Pachymeres, ed. Failler, 1, 191, 271, and II, 403 (Bonn ed., I, 137, 205, and 310); Gregoras, I, 83 and 111; Chronicle of the Morea, ed. J. Schmitt (London, 1904), verses 3606-7, 3703-5, and 9086-87; Angold, Byzantine Government, 292; D. Geanakoplos, Emperor Michael Palaeologus and the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 65, 67, 69, 92-93, 229, and 282-83; Laiou, Constantinople, 40-41.

62Some Cumans, however, served as standing troops, evidently mercenaries. These appear as a distinct group only once, but very significantly, at the time of Michael VIII's election to the regency in 1258. After the Latin mercenaries were con- sulted in the matter, the Cumans present at court offered in turn their opinion in good Greek, which implies that these Cumans spent considerable time in the company of Greek speakers: Akropolites, 158, lines 18-21 (and cf. 120-21); Angold, Byzantine Government, 105 and 188; Geanakoplos, Mi- chael, 42.

63 Kantakouzenos, I, 35; Laiou, Constantinople, 282.

64Oikonomides, "Compagnies," 365, suggests they might have been transformed into pronoiars of the soldier-company type.

65 Kantakouzenos, I, 259.5-18; D. Nicol, The Byzantine Family of Kantakouzenos (Washington, D.C., 1968), 152 note 44; Asdra- cha, Rhodopes, 82; Haldon, "Limnos," 178 (note 1 above); cf. Dilger, Regesten, no. 2586. L. Mavromatis, La fondation de l'empire serbe: Le kralj Milutin (Thessaloniki, 1978), 75, first dis- cerned the connection between these two passages from Kan- takouzenos, here and in the note above.

66Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 157, lines 12-20 (Bonn ed., I, 110.10-20). Failler, I, 157 note 5, cannot identify this Chryseia, but places it to the west of the land walls, which apparently rules out an identification with Chrysopolis (Skoutari) on the Asian side of the Bosporos.

14 MARK C. BARTUSIS

nomic activity between the Nikaian and Latin ter- ritories. This passage from Pachymeres also

explains the origin of the name. Thelimatarios (from O•6X[na "will") had nothing to do with their

being "volunteer" soldiers, as has often been

thought.67 On the contrary, Pachymeres indicates that they were known as Thelematarioi in the period prior to the reconquest of 1261, during which time they clearly were not soldiers. Indeed, their

advantageous position could only be maintained insofar as they abstained from taking sides. Thelj- matarios simply means that they did as they pleased, declaring no allegiance and having no master. Only in this sense were they "free-willed."68

Apparently, at least some of the Thelematarioi remained Byzantines at heart, for they played a

significant role in the recovery of Constantinople. Led by one Koutritzakes, they informed the general Alexios Strategopoulos about the defenses of the City, and some of them, including the priest Lakeras and a certain Glavatos, were among the first to surmount the City's walls.69 Once Constan-

tinople was retaken, Michael VIII rewarded the Thelematarioi. "Because of their zeal and good- will, land good for producing fruit and excellent for everything sown on it was delivered in heredi-

tary title to the Thelematarioi." 70 Evidently Michael's grants of land to the Thele-

matarioi were connected to an obligation of mili-

tary service, because the Thelematarioi were formed into a special military group that is seen

participating in the battle of Apros in 1305. This would mean that they had become a hereditary

group of imperial servants, because it had to be their sons and grandsons that fought at Apros. Ac-

cording to Pachymeres, "the Vlachikon and whatever there was from the Thelematarioi were welded together, and after a fashion [Michael IX] drew it up to form a rearguard under the Megas Hetaireiarches" Doukas (Bonn ed., II, 549.10-19). Since Gregoras' account of the same operation (I, 230-31) states that, aside from Tourkopouloi, Alans, and Macedonian and Thracian cavalry, most of the forces were foot troops, P. Mutaffiev ("Vojni'ki," 620) reasonably concluded that the Thelematarioi were likewise infantry. Logistically it was indeed sound practice to station reliable foot

troops in the rear. If the Thelematarioi were infan-

try troops, their landholdings would have been small. Thus, the Thelematarioi appear to be a he-

reditary group of smallholding soldiers. The documentary sources contain a number of

references to Thelematarioi, but they unfortu-

nately do not do much to corroborate Pachymeres on their economic status and on the nature of their

landholdings. We read that in 1318 "some of the Thelematarioi" were called as witnesses in a case

involving an accusation of Bogomilism. The ano-

nymity of these men and the fact that they are identified by a group description suggests that

they were a modest group of imperial servants, not unlike those that fought at Apros.71 Later, in 1349, John VI Kantakouzenos issued a chrysobull in fa- vor of Vatopedi that confirmed Arsenios Tzampla- kon's donation of the Psychosostria monastery in

Constantinople to Vatopedi. The emperor further

granted that Psychosostria's dependency called

Hagios Elias no longer pay eight hyperpyra yearly "to Katakalon from the Thelematarioi soldiers"

(7bg thv &ndU T6iOv OEOkj[aTaCwlaY OTCQCUlWt6VY

KaraxaXk6v), which had been mandated by a chrysobull of Andronikos II, and he formulaically ordered that no one including "the said Thelematar- ios Katakalon" bother the monastery about these

eight hyperpyra. Katakalon was therefore a mili-

tary man who had been receiving an epiteleia of

eight hyperpyra yearly from Hagios Elias for more than twenty-one years.72

While this document shows that the Thelema-

67Schatzkammer, p. 125, and F. Dblger, Sechs byzantinische Prak- tika des 14. Jahrhundertsfiir das Athoskloster Iberon (Munich, 1949), p. 123 ("freiwilliger Soldat"), and Mutafiiev, "Vojnivki," 620 ("dobrovolveski otredi"). Geanakoplos, Michael, 95, mislead- ingly translates the word as "Voluntaries."

68As Geanakoplos, Michael, 95, notes, the adjective OFBhka- TdQoL is found in the Chronicle of the Morea, verses 605 and 6935, to describe undisciplined Frankish and German troops.

69Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 191-203 (Bonn ed., I, 138-48); Geanakoplos, Michael, 105-10. An anonymous 14th-century poem (inJ. Miiller, "Byzantinische Analekten," SBMirnch, Phil.- hist.Kl. 9 [1852], 366-89, line 571) gives their number as five hundred (cited by Geanakoplos, Michael, 107).

70Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 221, lines 20-23 (Bonn ed., I, 164.1-5): ... XXI oQo0r0Ev tooig

v 'EXEL, Ec',6g

TE xatc vS6g

n6.E0g, 6noug ELg yEW)y(av, E rTIJTJVlg T tg Eg Xdr)LV

yovtxuevOe~l( olg erolCg zqOlaXn orQL Tig

b(v0wv oTou6big xcat

Fe-vo(ag Evvxa, yilg dyaOig Eig xag•oyov(av

xatL •EoeUo g gE g

•nv Ob xa

ac3aT..6peRvov. My translation follows the interpreta-

tions of the passage found in H. Ahrweiler, Byzance et la mer (Paris, 1966), 337, and Geanakoplos, Michael, 124, but I am not

altogether sure that the verb aaLQO) should not be interpreted in its modern sense, the meaning of the passage thereby being that the hereditary lands of the Thelamatarioi were exempted from Michael's redistribution process.

71 MM I, 135, line 32; Darrouzbs, Regestes, no. 2084. 72Arkadios Vatopedinos, F rdcatTa Tg v KwvoTavTvov~U6-

kXL Rovig g ZO?gO xo 6Xotig ?gvuXoo0woT(gag, BNJ 13 (1937), no. 3, p. 308, V-ta', lines 125-27 and 138-39. On the document, see D6lger, Regesten, no. 2956 (and cf. ibid., no. 2611) and H. Ahrweiler, "L'Upiteleia dans le cartulaire de Lemviotissa," Byzan- tion 24 (1954), 90 note 2. In Ddlger's summary of this document (Schatzkammer, no. 43-44 III, with notes), the key phrase is read


tarioi continued to exist as a military division in the vicinity of Constantinople well into the fourteenth century, it tends to broaden the range of positions held by Thelematarioi in the socioeconomic spectrum. Even though Katakalon is cited with but one name and no title, not even kyr, he nevertheless was

important enough to merit the attention of an em-

peror. Since Andronikos II granted him the eight- hyperpyra epiteleia through a chrysobull, it is arguable, though by no means certain, that the origin of this epiteleia was not a simple land sale, as in the case of many epiteleiai, but an imperial grant of pronoia, of which one element was this

epiteleia. Since eight hyperpyra was too low to be the income of even a foot soldier, Katakalon must have had additional, unknown sources of income.

All of the other references to Thelematarioi in the documentary sources deal with people that bore "Thelematarios" as a name: (a) In 1317 a praktikon mentions Zographou's possession of a field of three modioi in a place called Dragattia near the village of Hierissos that it had acquired prior to 1279 through a donation Toi OEE1IaTdQL1 or OEhXlIakdQg1.73 (b) Around 1290 a man sold a field to the hegoumenos of Lavra in a place called Proavlax, about five km from Hierissos. The field was located

tkqo(0wv F••oy(ov 'TO O eC 'x•aTdQL. Periorismoi of 1300 and 1321 of Lavra's landholdings in Proavlax then mention the "rights of The- lematares."74 (c) An inventory of Lavra's paroikoi in the katepanikion of Hierissos from around 1300 notes the monastery's possession of a vineyard plot (ampelion stasikon) of 1 1/4 modioi "from the dowry of Thelematares" located in the village of Hierissos (Lavra II, no. 91, lines 243-44). (d) A 1301 praktikon mentions a field Iviron owned nkaLXOov TOt

OEkhl~cadQl (Dl1ger, Sechs, A 249). (e) In 1320 Chilandar was granted ownership of a field in a place called Longos near Hierissos (not to be con- fused with the homonymous village on the Longos peninsula) tXn•o(ov To0 e1e•yatdQ1 xa•t 'roT3 'AvoauTaoov (Petit, Chilandar, no. 55, lines 19-20). (f) And a praktikon made between 1320 and 1338 states that Xenophon owned a piece of land (aulo- topion) of one modios, at an uncertain location, that

was donated km C ro0E e •ktatiaQ(ov xact O t-

avo0.5 Except for the property in the last reference, all

of these properties are known to have been in the vicinity of the town of Hierissos. It seems that we have before us two generations of one or two families named Thelematarios (usually simplified to the more demotic Thelemataris/-es) that were holding land from before 1279 until at least 1321. These people held at least five discrete parcels of land, though those with known areas were very small (one to three modioi). Further, the frequent omission of given names suggests that the family (or families) was not a particularly distinguished one. While we may be tempted to conclude that someone in one of these families had been a Thelematarios-the name, in the same class as Tzakon, Vasmoulos, and Prosalentes, is simply too peculiar to think otherwise-there is no real evidence with which to connect the Thelematarios family and the military Thelematarioi.

Michael VIII's Tzakones

After the reconquest of Constantinople, Michael VIII undertook the essential task of strengthening the City's defenses by refortifying its walls and re- creating a Byzantine navy. As marines, he initially employed the Gasmouloi, men of mixed Byzantine and Latin parentage living in and around Con- stantinople, but apparently the need for soldiers to fortify the capital and man the fleet was such that Michael soon had to look elsewhere. According to an often-cited passage from Pachymeres, Michael "had great need to settle the City with light-armed soldiers, and so he had many Lakones, arriving from the Morea, settled as natives, distributing places near the City. Bestowing the yearly pay, he also supplied them with many other liberalities, and used them for many [things] inside and outside [Constantinople], for they displayed worthy behavior in the wars."76 Accompanying the Protos-

differently, but Arkadios' reading is sure: see Schatzkammer, pl. 43b, third line from bottom.

73Zographou, no. 54, lines 160-61 (1317) = Movin, "Akti," 184. The Slavic translation of the praktikon renders the name as DEAHMATA. Zographou, no. 52, lines 42-43 (1279); on the date, see J. Lefort, Actes d'Esphigmenou (Paris, 1973), p. 78.

74Lavra II, no. 84, line 7; no. 90, line 368; and no. 108, line 720.

75Xenophon, App. II, line 124; the editor (p. 232) thinks the property was located around the villages of Phournia and Psalis on the Longos peninsula.

76Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 253, lines 5-10 (Bonn ed., I, 188.2-8): T6 6' E'a•aQoLg TyV oTct (JTQCT) otCxlty V yv T

6.y xat XMayv i' tdvdyxrg Lstyev &noi yE xCtY AdXt oLot nkElotgL, UoT- EQov Ex to3 MoQoI dl&typtvog, E5LtEQG(oag T6noug, Ent LTg t6Xog a3tctgsXE xaQTOLXElV (6g aCLT6X6ootL xact, Q6ycLg ETlo(oLg

8&ooD1tEtvog xat 7ulXEooTLg LX0hoLg LXOTLot1LQao LV.... Geanako- plos, Michael, 123 and 126; cf. Ahrweiler, La Mer, 357 note 1 and 362. See also H. Antoniadis-Bibicou, Etudes d'histoire mari- time de Byzance (Paris, 1966), 33-34, and especially S. Caratzas, Les Tzacones (Berlin, 1976). On the renewal of the fleet, see Geanakoplos, Michael, 125-27, and Ahrweiler, La Mer, 336 ff.

16 MARK C. BARTUSIS

trator Alexios Philanthropenos on the first expedition of the new fleet in 1262 or 1263 was "the Lakonikon whom the ruler transplanted from the

Peloponnesos."77 Later, when describing the com-

position of a naval expedition in 1268, Pachymeres writes, "many others [were] from the Lakones whom they called Tzakones, corrupting [their name], whom the ruler transplanted with their wives and children to Constantinople from the Morea and the western parts, and who were numerous and warlike."78 Gregoras, too, paraphras- ing Pachymeres, points out the peculiar ambiguity of the name of these soldiers: "Joining the [Gas- mouloi were] the Lakones, a sea army in arms, coming to the emperor from the Peloponnesos, whom the common spoken language called Tza- kones" (I, 98.10-13).

In the late Byzantine period the word "tzakon" had a number of senses, of which two interest us here. First, it was applied, without any ethnic or

geographic significance, to a variety of light-armed soldiers and guards. Further, it was applied as an ethnic label to the inhabitants of the southeastern Morea. Michael VIII's Tzakones, or Lakones, as

Pachymeres and Gregoras thought they should

properly be called, were those men that he trans-

planted from the Morea and probably elsewhere to serve as marines, light-armed troops to guard the walls of the City, and, as we learn from other sources, even as a division of palace guards.79 Al-

though there is no need to think that Michael's Tzakones were exclusively recruited from the population of Lakonia, or even the Morea, Pachy- meres clearly thought that the majority of these men had come from the eastern Peloponnesos. Thus, Michael's Tzakones were tzakones by occu-

pation and, at least to some extent, tzakones by ethnicity.

Michael VIII's Tzakones were clearly smallhold-

ing soldiers. All the necessary elements are present: they were "settled as natives" with their families, they received "places near Constantinople," and since they were light-armed, we can assume their landholdings were relatively small. The only unusual element, the "yearly pay" they were to receive, is very significant in that it shows that the distinction between mercenary and smallholding

soldier could be blurred. A letter of Gregory of

Cyprus from the 1280s, describing a criminal case of rape, breaking-and-entering, and disorderly conduct in which a group of Tzakones was impli- cated, supports Pachymeres' contention that the Tzakones received pay by its indirect reference to these eight particular Tzakones as mercenaries

(misthophorikon) serving for pay.80 Further, since more than twenty years had passed between the time Michael's Tzakones were first brought to Con-

stantinople and the time Gregory wrote the letter, and since the detailed exploits of Gregory's Tza- kones do not seem to be those of middle-aged men, it is highly likely that these Tzakones were not members of the original Tzakones contingents but, rather, their sons, who were either minors when transplanted with their parents or born in

Constantinople. From this we may conclude with a fair degree of certainty that the profession of Mi- chael VIII's Tzakones was, at least in some cases, hereditary.

That this kind of mercenary service should be

hereditary is not surprising in light of the fact that the original Tzakones had received not only pay, but, as Pachymeres tell us, "places (topoi) near the

City." While these may have been rather small and

inadequate for substantial farming (we note that

Pachymeres does not employ the word "land"), they at least provided a home that the emperor could treat as a conditional grant in order to ensure continued service by the original Tzakones' heirs.81 When Pseudo-Kodinos wrote that the arms and war horse of a mercenary who died childless were to be returned to the megas domestikos, he was affirming both the frequent conditional nature of grants to mercenaries and the frequently over- looked hereditary element in mercenary service itself.82 Probably these were conscious imperial pol- licies intended to ensure a constant supply of resident mercenaries and to dissuade mercenaries from leaving their jobs to seek employment elsewhere.

Michael's Tzakones are mentioned by name in

77Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 277, lines 20-21 (Bonn ed., I, 209. 7-12). On the date, see Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 270 note 3.

78Pachymeres, ed. Failler, II, 401-3 (Bonn ed., I, 309. 14-22). 79On this last function, see M. Bartusis, "The Palace Guard in

Byzantium after 1204," Byzantion 60 (1990).

80Eustratiades, Gregory, no. 166, pp. 162-64; M. Bartusis, "Brigandage in the Late Byzantine Empire," Byzantion 51 (1981), 396-97.

81Mutaffiev, "Vojni-ki," 527, uses this evidence to suggest that it was characteristic of the late Byzantine period to grant "lands" to mercenaries. This is true, but one needs to distinguish between agricultural land and a simple home with garden. In the

present case it is impossible to know which of the two is implied by Pachymeres.

82Pseudo-Kodinos, Traite des offices, ed. J. Verpeaux (Paris, 1966), 251, lines 14-18.


regard to only two naval expeditions, Philanthro-

penos' Morean campaigns of 1262 or 1263, and of

1268,83 though it does seem likely that throughout the 1260s and 1270s these Tzakones, together with the Gasmouloi, formed the basic Byzantine marine force. Around 1285 there was a major turn of events, when, as a budget-cutting move, Androni- kos II's advisors convinced him to reduce the size of the fleet. While Pachymeres speaks only generally of the "mercenaries on the ships" and Grego- ras only mentions the impoverishment of the Gasmouloi, there can be little doubt that the Tza- kones, to the extent that they relied on their pay, were also seriously affected by Andronikos II's decision. A letter of Gregory of Cyprus from around 1285-86 that speaks of the impoverishment of "Dorians and Peloponnesians" settled at Herakleia in Thrace may be a reference to these Tzakones.84 Indeed, with the exception of Pseudo-Kodinos' brief discussion of the Tzakones as a palace guard, all mention of Tzakones in the area of Constanti- nople ends after the 1280s.85 But since at least some Gasmouloi survived in their occupation after 1285, we should not rule out the possibility that some of Michael's Tzakones did so as well.

Prosalentai

In addition to marines, Michael's new fleet required rowers. Pachymeres writes that Michael "outfitted and built a fleet and [as] rowers

(xtQooGE6vTEg), he assigned more than a thousand from the lands (~x tX6v X•g6Wv).'"86

"From the lands" is Pachymeres' way of saying that the rowers did not come from depopulated Constantinople. As an inducement to enlist, Michael offered land. "In the order of servants to them [the marines], as if one might say to row ships forward (vry6v eFg ?6 tQo~60dev kdrWa), were the Proselontes from all over; to the good and greatest part [of these] the ruler assigned lands near the shore everywhere."'87 During the first expedition of the new fleet in 1262 or 1263, Pachymeres writes that "those called Pro-

selontes were assigned alone to the rowing." 88 Even

though the naval activities of the Proselontes-or Prosalentai, according to the form of the word that

appears in the documents-like those of Michael VIII's Tzakones, are noted only in regard to Phi- lanthropenos' two expeditions to the Morea in the 1260s, they too probably participated in all of the naval campaigns throughout the 1260s and 1270s.

Despite the reduction in the size of the Byzan- tine fleet after 1285 pursuant to the budget-cutting policies of Andronikos II's advisors, the Prosalen- tai are found in Constantinople as late as 1296.89 Kantakouzenos and Gregoras do not mention the Prosalentai by name, but this probably means little

except that these historians were showing their usual disdain for the technical nomenclature of the day. Where rowers are encountered in later sources, we may still be dealing with Prosalentai.90 The documentary sources do in fact suggest that the Prosalentai as an institution lasted well into the second half of the fourteenth century. A survey of the references to the Prosalentai in the documen-

tary sources confirms Pachymeres' statement that

they were assigned lands near the sea, while also

supplying important information about the nature of these landholdings and the ubiquity of the institution of Prosalentai.

(a) Lemnos. In surveys of Lavra's possessions on the island of Lemnos from 1284, 1304, and 1361, one particular border is repeatedly spoken of as formed by "the rights of the Prosalentai from Vouneada" (tz 8(xctaa TCv •nb •

~ v Bouvvd8wv JtOoao&evT;v).91 The nature of the landholdings of these Prosalentai from Vouneada, a village in northwest Lemnos, where Lavra had possessions of its own, is uncertain, although it is clear that they were not located in Vouneada itself, but at a place to the north, closer to the sea.92 The persist-

83Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 277, and II, 403 (Bonn ed., I, 209 and 309).

84Eustratiades, Gregory, no. 149 (= S. Eustratiades in 'ExxX•rlOLcLOTX6g q)d6og 4 [1909], pp. 105-6), cited by V. Lau- rent, Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople, I, fasc. 4 (Paris, 1971), no. 1493.

85 Tzakones did, of course, continue to exist in the provinces; see Bartusis, "Urban Guard Service."

86Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 223, lines 5-7 (Bonn ed., I, 164.15-16).

87Pachymeres, ed. Failler, II, 403, lines 2-4 (Bonn ed., I, 309.19-22).

88Pachymeres, ed. Failler, I, 277, lines 19-20 (Bonn ed., I, 209.7-12). Although rowers, the Prosalentai were commanded in military duties (rowing warships) by Byzantine officers, and therefore fit my definition of "soldier." Indeed, they were no less soldiers than the humbler citizens of Periclean Athens.

89Pachymeres, Bonn ed., II, 237-38 and 240. 90See the comments of K.-P. Matschke, "Johannes Kantaku-

zenos, Alexios Apokaukos und die byzantinische Flotte in der Burgerkriegsperiode 1340-1355," Actes du XIVe Congres international des etudes byzantines (Bucharest, 1975), II, 204 note 52.

91Lavra II, no. 73, lines 9-10 (1284), and notes; no. 74, line 6 (1284); no. 77, lines 11-12 (1284?); no. 99, line 10 (1304); Lavra III, no. 139, line 13 (1361); also Haldon, "Limnos," 166 and note 9. On such "rights," see Laiou-Thomadakis, Peasant Society, 50-52.

920n the location of Vouneada, see Lavra IV, p. 141 note 502, and the map in Haldon, "Limnos," 190 (a couple of km NW of the town of Atsiki). For Lavra's possessions at Vouneada, see

18 MARK C. BARTUSIS

ence of these "rights" over an eighty-year period is interesting. By 1361 we are viewing third- or

fourth-generation Prosalentai, indicating that the institution itself was remarkably stable. And stabil- ity probably means that the vocation and landholding of a Prosalentes was hereditary.

(b) Kassandreia. At the beginning of a 1333

praktikon for Xenophon the apographeus states that he had been ordered to make a fiscal assessment of the properties of TQookXEVT?Lcx V, Ex- XX'kqoaLotLxCv, I[OVa•OTqQL•xWV, XlQVoop[3ovXhd• xat LO•C6v & atdvT•

on the Kassandreia peninsula (Xinophon, no. 22, line 2). Similar phrases appear in many praktika, but in this one particular case the landholdings of Prosalentai are cited, along with those of churches, monasteries, and the recipients of chrysobulls. The inclusion of Prosalentai within this list of other property owners strongly suggests that the Prosalentai, at least at Kassan- dreia, if not generally, were not dependent peasants, but free landowners.

The landholdings of the Prosalentai around

Xenophon's possessions at Sivri on Kassandreia seem to have been considerable and, interestingly enough, show an increase from 1333 to 1338. The

periorismos of Xenophon's 1,800 modioi at Sivri, contained in the 1333 praktikon, is quite thorough in noting the neighboring "rights" of other landowners that bordered the monastery's land. As the circuit is followed around this land, on one side was Xenophon's land and on the other were, in order, the rights of the monastery of Akapniou, the

rights of an anonymous megas stratopedarches (three mentions), the rights of a certain Glavas and the rights of the same megas stratopedarches, the "prosalentika rights" (six mentions), and the rights of the monastery of Vatopedi (three mentions).93 The prosalentika rights lie adjacent to Xenophon's land for nearly half of the printed periorismos text.

Constantine Makrenos' sigilli6des gramma of Jan- uary 1338, confirming Xenophon's possession of

all its lands, includes a modified periorismos of the same 1,800 modioi at Sivri. This survey is not quite as fastidious as the earlier one, and the differences in vocabulary and phrasing are sufficient to suggest that this periorismos had been newly made. Here, as in 1333, Xenophon's land borders first on the rights of the Akapniou monastery, but then, replacing the first mention of the rights of the me-

gas stratopedarches are "the rights of the village called tou Opsizontos, that is, of the prosalentika" (xact TCv x6LaL(WV TO XooQ( C~o t0o

• •XEYOVOV 'Oip(lovTog, ifot "t v TQooakFvrTLXov).94 In fact, the rights of the megas stratopedarches do not appear at all in this periorismos. The rights of Glavas are similarly not mentioned. Instead, the passage of the periorismos that had spoken of the rights of the megas stratopedarches and Glavas in 1333, now begins instead with a reference to prosalentika rights. Otherwise the prosalentika rights mentioned in the 1333 periorismos still existed in 1338

(Xinophon, no. 25, line 52). The 1338 periorismos concludes its references to bordering lands with the same mention of the rights of Vatopedi as in the 1333 document. Thus, between 1333 and 1338, the lands of the anonymous megas strato-

pedarches and the aforementioned Glavas were transferred to Prosalentai. The reason for this is not known. While simple sale cannot be ruled out, a historically plausible explanation is that the ranks of the Prosalentai were being increased by An- dronikos III for the sake of his numerous military campaigns during the 1330s. Since Prosalentai were most useful when settled by the sea, it is possible that imperial authorities ordered an ex-

change or confiscation of the lands of the megas stratopedarches and Glavas. In any event, the increase in the size of prosalentika holdings at Sivri was considerable. Using as a crude gauge the relative space in the text given to the common border of Xenophon's land with that of the Prosalentai, the Prosalentai now had a common border with more than two-thirds of Xenophon's land. Since the monastery held 1,800 modioi, the prosalentika holdings must have amounted to at least several hundred modioi.95

(c) Longos (Akros). The Prosalentai also had e.g., Lavra III, no. 139, lines 100 ff. On the location of the prosalentika rights, see Lavra IV, pp. 135, 137, and 138 note 481. Further, from a praktikon for the possessions of a dependency of Lavra on Lemnos from 1355, there is a list of monastic lands

including "land in various places from the exaleimmatiki hypo- stasis of the Prosalentes Eustratios Chiotes (ntQooaLt(vrov EUi-

oractrCov To Xbrovu)": Lavra III, no. 136, line 29. The location of this property is uncertain.

93Xenophon, no. 22, lines 20-30, and on Xenophon's holdings on Kassandreia, see pp. 31-33. The megas stratopedarches cannot be identified; a possible candidate is George Choumnos, epitropos of Thessaloniki in 1328: Kantakouzenos, I, 268. 4-5.

94Xdnophon, no. 25, line 48, and cf. no. 22, lines 13-14. This

village "Opsizontos" evidently is only otherwise attested in a false copy of Xenophon, no. 1 (see p. 61 of the edition).

95 This is a worst-case estimate assuming that (1) half the mon-

astery's land bordered on the sea, and (2) in depth, the prosalentika holdings averaged no more than an improbable one hundred meters. This yields a total area for the prosalentika holdings of about two hundred modioi.


holdings on the peninsula adjacent to Kassandreia.

Consisting of some exaleimmatika stasia in Psalida, they do not seem to have been as extensive as their

holdings on Kassandreia. In Constantine Mak- renos' 1338 sigilliades gramma, the story of these stasia is told (Xenophon, no. 25, lines 109-10). Orig- inally they had belonged to Xenophon; then, "not a few years ago they were taken away and assigned to Prosalentai" (&6nondoOR 8 Qb XQ6Y6vv o0ix

6kxycyv xac CoxatTozrl eiTg Qooa•kGvag); and

after this they were given to Thessalonikan soldiers, who finally donated them back to the mon-

astery. It is impossible to say when the Prosalentai actually held these stasia, but it is likely that they had lost them prior to 1320, when we see "some stratiotai and paroikoi" holding property in Psa- lida, which a falsified copy of an earlier act, fabri- cated between 1300 and 1320, describes as exaleimmatika stasia.96 Nothing prevents the phrase "not a few years ago" from referring to the reign of Mi- chael VIII, and so all that can be said is that Pros- alentai held exaleimmatika stasia at Psalida on Lon- gos sometime between 1261 and 1320.

(d) Popolia. A 1317 praktikon for Lavra's metochion of Aeidarokastron at Prinarion, located in the katepanikion of Popolia, to the east of the mouth of the Strymon, lists among the eleutheroi paroikoi belonging to the metochion "the widow Kale Prosalentina with son John and a dwelling." The next praktikon extant for these same holdings, probably from 1321, lists "the widow Prosa- lento with son John, a dwelling, and a telos of [illeg- ible]."'9 Evidently someone in this woman's family had been a Prosalentes, and while we cannot say how or when the family came upon hard times (though it could have been as far back as 1285 when Andronikos II decided to neglect the fleet), Kale in 1317 was a very poor dependent peasant. This may serve as evidence for the precariousness of the position of Prosalentai.

It is now possible to make a few generalizations about the landholdings and status of the Prosalen- tai. First, Pachymeres was quite right when he wrote that the rowers were given lands near the shores. The documentary sources show them holding lands in the katepanikia of Kassandreia, Akros, Popolia, and on the isle of Lemnos, and, of course, we may assume some were also holding possessions around Constantinople98 and else-

where. Second, there is only one rationale for giving rowers land near the shores, and this is that they should live near their work. Therefore, we can be sure that the Prosalentai lived on their landholdings. If the intention had been merely to ensure them an income, that is, to make them pronoiars of some kind, they could have been given lands anywhere. Third, the Prosalentai seem to have been a legal category of landowners with

"rights" comparable to those of churches, monasteries, pronoiars, and other lay landlords. Fourth, they nevertheless were rowers, an occupation that was never the source of much status or material reward in the medieval centuries, and their position was not so secure that some of their members could not on occasion descend into the class of de-

pendent peasants. Lastly, they were settled in

groups that facilitated their rapid mustering. On Kassandreia the settlement was large enough to encompass more than an entire village.

The Prosalentai were therefore free peasants who lived on relatively modest landholdings in specifically designated settlements near the sea.

They held their lands on condition of continued service as rowers for the fleet. No doubt regula- tions developed involving the frequency with which service could be demanded and the problem of the heritability of holdings that did not provide a man fit to row. But we know nothing of these matters, nor whether such service was organized on a communal or an individual basis. The Prosa- lentai may also have received cash-certainly at least rations"9-for the periods when they were on active duty, but Pachymeres' comment that An- dronikos II's advisors were opposed to the outlay of public taxes for the mercenaries of the fleet may only apply to the marines, and not to the rowers. The Prosalentai held lands, and so they cannot be identified with those who Pachymeres says were left with nothing when the fleet was abandoned in 1285 and were forced to pursue "low crafts" (va- nausai technai), desert to the Turks, or become pi- rates.'00 From Pachymeres' point of view the Pros- alentai, as farmers, had always pursued "low crafts."

96Xenophon, no. 13, lines 118-19, and App. I, line 30. 97Lavra II, no. 105, lines 19-20, and no. 112, line 17. 98Cf. Pachymeres, ed. Failler, II, 543, lines 6-10 (Bonn ed., I,

425).

99The evidence for this is derived from several 15th-century documents: Arkadios Vatopedinos, 'AyLtoQFT-E•X•

&adlExt a Ex troo 'QXEcov u Tg ovgS BaronEEovu, F ry6QtoS 6

n'aXatg 3

(1919), no. 43, p. 433, lines 19-20; Lavra III, no. 162, line 24; ibid., no. 167, line 23; and Mo'in, "Akti," 166.

0?oPachymeres, Bonn ed., II, 70-71. Pachymeres speaks of these individuals as a misthophorikon, strati6tikon, or maximon. None of these words need apply to rowers. Cf. Gregoras, I, 175-176, who notes only the ensuing difficulties for the Gas- mouloi.

20 MARK C. BARTUSIS

We are now in a position to define the concept of the smallholding soldier in late Byzantium. I would like to offer two different types of definition: a descriptive one, based on the attested his- torical characteristics of the four groups of small-

holding soldiers that I have discussed, and another, more abstract definition, that takes into account the four groups, while, in a social scientific fashion, establishing parameters within which a soldier would need to fit in order to be considered a smallholding soldier.

On the basis of what we have been able to learn about the four groups of soldiers discussed, small-

holding soldiers tended to form the lower end of the social spectrum of professional soldiers: light cavalry (Cumans), guards and marines (Tzakones), infantry (Thelematarioi), and rowers (Prosalentai). From this we may conclude that the lands with which they were associated were relatively modest. Further, smallholding soldiers generally lived in communities (at least the Cumans and the Prosa-

lentai) and inhabited lands that were located in

specific locations, often for convenience of muster-

ing (at least the Prosalentai and the Tzakones). They cultivated their own land (the Cumans and Prosalentai certainly; the Tzakones and Thelema- tarioi probably). This contrasts with what we know of the typical pronoia soldier, who with his larger holdings did not farm, but, on an individual basis, acted as landlord and tax collector, frequently in out of the way places without strategic importance. The smallholding soldier is also distinguished by his more direct connection to the land. Since the

pronoiar's direct relation was to the income pro- duced by economic instruments and not to the instruments themselves, he was at least one step dis- tant from the source of his income, a fact that

played a role in establishing his higher social position (soldier-landlord, rather than soldier-farmer).

Further, all four of these groups of soldiers seem to have had hereditary military obligations that

persisted through generations, though it is not clear whether these obligations followed the soldier or the soldier's property. The reference to

"prosalentika ktemata" suggests that service as a Prosalentes was attached to the holding of particular military properties. It parallels the couple of references we have to "tzakonikon" property.'0' On the other hand, the obligations on Michael VIII's Tzakones may have followed the individual (or his

family), because they were primarily mercenaries and their landholdings appear to have been modest. In fact, for both the Tzakones and the Cu- mans, the ethnic component attached to each

group of soldiers makes it likely that military service was passed down through families. There is no evidence for or against the possibility that Pros- alentai and Thelematarioi, legally or otherwise, alienated their holdings to others who fulfilled the

necessary service. The settling of soldiers in colonies is an interest-

ing phenomenon, certainly not without precedent in the Roman and Byzantine worlds. We may hy- pothesize that emperors found this policy practical for several reasons. First, the practice clearly ac- commodated the social needs of less civilized

peoples or recent immigrant groups. The Cumans and, to a lesser extent, the Tzakones could maintain their social organization within their communities, and the leaders of these groups similarly could maintain their prerogatives over their

people once settled within the empire. Also, groups of smallholding soldiers living in communities or colonies facilitated their administration by the state. Mustering the troops could be accom-

plished without great effort, and the eternal problem of individual soldiers becoming too impover- ished to serve could have been avoided through a communal obligation of military service. Finally, settling soldiers in groups allowed a greater spe- cialization among smallholding, settled peoples. Since there was no need for all of them to share

equally the roles of farmer and soldier, some could

spend more time away from the land soldiering, while others concentrated on agriculture.

But were there smallholding soldiers aside from the examples I have cited? And, if so, did their characteristics differ from those of the four ex-

amples? Although I cannot securely identify any other soldiers in the late period as smallholding soldiers, the great diversity in the known forms of

military organization and the creativity displayed by Byzantine leaders in organizing their defenses

(even if ultimately unsuccessful) suggest that the probable answer to both questions is yes. It is no coincidence that the four examples of smallholding soldiers that I have cited should appear to be so similar. As large, newly created groups, they were noticed by the historians, without whose tes- timony their military status could not be deter- mined, for the documentary references alone, as important as they are for confirming the histori-

01 See Oikonomides, "Compagnies," 357, and Bartusis, "Ur- ban Guard Service."


ans, are insufficient to prove that the four groups of men were smallholding soldiers. Thus, there is every possibility that other groups of smallholding soldiers existed, as well as an entire category of smallholding soldiers that were settled, not in communities, but individually. This latter kind of soldier, with parallels in the middle Byzantine period, remains, to the best of my knowledge, unattested in the late period, and it seems that only serendi- pitous references in the texts of little-known documents will rescue its representatives from the shadows. Until then, we can only speculate about the range of forms that may have embraced the concept of the smallholding soldier. The example of Michael VIII's Tzakones who received land as well as pay suggests that hybrid categories of soldiers existed. Thus, a soldier whose livelihood was derived from a variety of sources was a smallholding soldier only to the degree that his means of livelihood was connected to a particular relation-

ship with the land. And so, in order to get some idea of the parameters within which the institution of smallholding soldiers could exist, and to distinguish the smallholding soldier from other kinds of warriors, it is useful at this point to attempt to construct an abstract definition of the smallholding soldier.

Since we know so few details of the institution of smallholding soldiers in the late period, this is no easy matter. Any definition, though it need only be narrow enough to exclude the mercenary and the pronoia soldier, must be broad enough to include not only the attested forms of the institution, but also undocumented forms that logically could have existed and may, at a later date, be discovered. These requirements, plus other factors, explain why I have chosen to call this soldier the smallholding soldier, and not the "settled" soldier, the "peasant" soldier, or the "enrolled" soldier, epithets that have from time to time been employed, not entirely without justification, but in each case are less suitable than "smallholding." The adjective "settled" implies that the soldiers were newly established on specific properties, and that they themselves inhabited and cultivated these properties. While these characteristics, as far as I can tell, cor- rectly describe the four groups of soldiers that we have been dealing with, at least in the first generation, they are not quite adequate for the second and later generations of these soldiers (who were not "settled" in the same sense as their fathers) nor for other kinds of smallholding soldiers that could have existed. For example, there is no difficulty in

imagining a smallholding soldier who decided to lease his property, choosing not to inhabit and cul- tivate it himself. "Settled" soldiers are therefore a special category of smallholding soldiers.

"Peasant" soldier is appropriate to the extent that the population of the empire may be divided into two groups, peasants and aristocrats. And yet, while it may be reasonable to place a smallholding soldier within the peasant class for the simple reason that he was not a privileged aristocrat, he need not actually have been a peasant, that is, in the sim- plest sense, a cultivator of the soil. This distinction has been recognized by the many scholars that regard the expression "peasant soldier," with its evocative allusions to Cincinnatus, as misleading in a Byzantine context. Only in societies whose members bore a universal military obligation did soldiers themselves farm land generally. When military service burdens only part of the population, the military becomes a special caste, who, even if they were not regarded as aristocrats, were distinct from the cultivators of the land. And the expression "enrolled soldier," derived from phrases such as

yeyQcgat•tvc Ev Tog oQcC•tL(ntxo0g xaTakrc6yoLg,

distinguishes the smallholding soldier from the pronoia soldier and the mercenary by emphasizing the former's alleged similarity to the middle Byz- antine soldier.102 But the similarity is only conjec- tural and, in any event, late Byzantine writers, such as Kantakouzenos (e.g., II, 58), routinely include pronoia soldiers among "those in the military lists," a phrase that seems to have lost much of its technical significance.

Consequently, I have preferred to speak of "smallholding" soldiers, in other words, soldiers that derived their remuneration from their connection to a "small holding." Such a definition prima facie excludes mercenaries who, to the extent that they were mercenaries, had no direct connection to land, and pronoia soldiers who, at least as far as we know, held or shared "large" holdings. However, we need to be more precise about what a small holding is, and, just as important, we need a simple way to distinguish small holdings from large holdings.

Defining a "small holding" is no easy matter. Ob- viously it is (a) a "small" property, but, even if we had abundant figures on property sizes, where should the dividing line be between large and small? While five thousand modioi of arable land

'02The expression is found in Charanis, "Social Structure," 130 and 134, where it is linked to the Nikaian highlanders.

22 MARK C. BARTUSIS

is clearly a large holding, and fifty certainly a small one, how should we regard a holding of five hundred modioi? A modern researcher would approach this problem by dividing the landowning population into percentiles and looking for natu- ral divisions within the landowning population, something the lack of statistics prevents the Byzan- tinist from doing. Nevertheless, while comparisons to more recent agrarian systems must be ap- proached with caution, it is interesting to note that in order for a landowner in Bulgaria at the turn of the twentieth century to be in the top four percent of proprietors (a group that held about 26% of the arable land), he merely needed to own more than

twenty hectares of arable land (about two hundred modioi).1'03

In order to avoid an arbitrary division between

large and small holdings, we might look for other

ways of differentiating proprietors that do not rely on statistical information. For example, the most

significant division is that formed by the institution of the paroikia, so that one might say that (b) a small

holding is one held by a paroikos. But even though paroikoi certainly had small holdings, it is axio- matic that not all small holders were paroikoi, nor can we even say that smallholding soldiers all derived their remuneration from properties larger than all or even average paroikikai staseis. Then

again, one could adopt the practical point of view that a small holding was (c) the property of any landowner who actually worked his land himself. But we cannot be sure that even paroikoi, as a rule, actually cultivated all their own land and did not lease portions to others. Perhaps, then, one might qualify this definition by adding that the proprietor had to work any portion of his own land. This is a much better definition, but unfortunately it is useless. For one thing, in all but the most obvious cases, it is almost impossible to determine whether

any particular proprietor actually cultivated any particular piece of his holding himself. Even for

paroikoi, it is only an assumption, albeit reasonable, that the members of the household actually worked the land listed with them in a praktikon. Are peasant landlords still to be considered "small holders," or are smallholding landlords still to be considered "peasants"? Most of us would probably answer yes, if they still lived and looked like peasants. And this brings us to a social definition of the "small holding": (d) a property whose owner lived

within the social milieu of the peasantry, in other words, the holdings of a proprietor who, regardless of his wealth, condition of servitude, and daily labors, spent his time, lived, and married among the peasantry.

Finally, there is the fiscal definition, according to which a small holding is (e) one whose owner was not the recipient of fiscal privileges, such as the

possession of paroikoi and tax exemptions, granted on an individual basis by an emperor. The

great advantage of this definition is that it allows us to make a more or less clear-cut distinction between small holders and large landowners simply on the basis of fiscal data, the information we pos- sess in greatest abundance.104 Thus, a landowner that received any kind of personal grant, gift, or

privilege from the emperor was a large landowner, and he who did not was a small holder. Since one could say that such privileges made one an aristocrat, there was a correlation and interrelation between social and fiscal status. And so, while I sup- pose that there may have been large landowners, even in the fourteenth century, that held no fiscal

exemptions, as well as some smaller landowners that held paroikoi (and perhaps an entire category of "middle holders" whose definition I shall leave to others), on the whole, this distinction between

privileged and non-privileged proprietors pro- vides a methodologically sound and, most important, a practical means of identifying the small

holding. Accordingly, based on such a definition of a

small holding, I would define the smallholding soldier as a soldier whose remuneration was based on a personal relationship to a specific property, but whose claim to this remuneration did not proceed from an individual benefaction bestowed by an

emperor. The remuneration could be in the form of either cash or agricultural produce. The relation-

ship to the property could be based on habitation, cultivation, ownership, or, more broadly, any direct relationship to the person that inhabited, owned, or cultivated the property. However, it must be a personal relationship in the sense that the soldier was connected to a definable, specific property. The property itself could be any combination of movable and immovable instruments of production. The phrase individual benefaction is necessary

103 B. Nedeljkovid, Istorija baftinske svojine u novoj Srbiji od kraja 18. veka do 1931 (Belgrade, 1936), 293-94; the figures for Ser- bia at that time, while incomplete, are comparable.

104In a similar fashion, the legal historian Taranovski, Istorija srpskog prava, 49-51, distinguished "free, small, allodial peasants" (slobodni sitni baftinici seljaci) in medieval Serbia from large landlords (vlastela) on the basis of the privileges only the latter received.


to include policy decisions involving bulk or blan- ket, impersonal grants to groups of people, but to exclude personal imperial grants to the soldier or his forebears.

This is a fiscal and economic definition that takes into account the four examples of smallholding soldiers that I have presented, and also leaves open several possible variations in the fiscal and economic arrangements of smallholding soldiers that, while logical, remain unattested. For example, there is the interesting possibility that some small holders of allodial lands received, administratively, a conditional tax exemption (exkousseia) in return for future military service. Further, this definition does not require the smallholding soldier to have been the actual cultivator of the land involved; he could have leased it to others to work. Nor does it require that the smallholding soldier personally inhabited the property from which his livelihood was derived.

Nor is it even necessary that the smallholding soldier owned or even possessed the property in question. It is easy to imagine the situation arising by which a property burdened with a military obligation did not produce an actual soldier from among the members of the household that held the property. The property holder then finds a proxy, perhaps a relative not associated with the household or simply an acquaintance, to perform the required military service. Thisscenario, al- luded to earlier when referring to possible divisions of labor within the known communities of smallholding soldiers, is unattested in the late period, but it parallels the distinction often made between the middle Byzantine stratiatis and strateu- omenos, respectively, the man that bore (or whose landholding bore) the military burden, and the man that actually performed the required service. Thus, my definition of the smallholding soldier embraces soldiers that held their own small holdings, as well as soldiers that, by proxy, fulfilled the military obligations of men that held small holdings burdened with a military obligation.

The definition is adequate to exclude those who were strictly mercenaries, because the salary of these was not derived from any particular property. It also excludes the majority of pronoia soldiers. There is no need to be concerned with the actual annual, economic value of pronoiai, nor to place them within the late Byzantine economic spectrum. It really does not matter how large or small the annual income of a pronoia was, as long as it was granted through an individual, personal act of

an emperor. It is self-evident that any man, regardless of his social or economic status, whose livelihood was established by the direct, individual, and personal intervention of the emperor was neither a peasant nor a "small holder." Rather, he was a special, privileged individual.

Yet, there were pronoia soldiers who seem to have received their pronoiai through grants that were not individualized, personal acts of an emperor. These are the collective pronoia soldiers, such as the Klazomenitai soldiers of Serres, who in 1342 received a chrysobull granting each of them hereditary title to a fiscal income (posotis) of ten or twelve hyperpyra of the pronoia that the group shared.'05 At the moment I am not concerned with the true economic power that corresponded to these ten and twelve hyperpyra, or even whether these apparently modest sums represented the total posotes of each soldier's share of the pronoia (for which I have my doubts), but rather, the only important point is whether their pronoia was bestowed on them individually, making them privileged landholders and aristocrats. The answer is clearly no. Even though the privileges they were granted in 1342 were issued through a chrysobull and thus formally constituted a personal act of an emperor, the grant was bestowed impersonally and to anonymous soldiers (the Klazomenitai are not named).106 In other words, its recipients had a social status not noticeably higher than, say, a group of peasant villagers that received an imperial writ lowering their taxes.

Nevertheless, the Klazomenitai soldiers do not fit my definition of a smallholding soldier, because they derived their remuneration from property held jointly, and so each of them did not derive his income from a specific property. Thus, my definition of the smallholding allows us to exclude collective pronoia soldiers such as the Klazomenitai, as well as all other known instances of collective pronoia. In any event one could make a case that there is something inappropriate about regarding any grant of "incorporeal rights," which a pronoia often was, as a "holding" at all, as if, from a mere

'05Schatzkammer, no. 16 = P. Lemerle, Actes de Kutlumus, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1988), no. 20.

106 Similarly, no names are found in the documents relating to the other two groups of collective pronoia soldiers: the Varvar- enoi soldiers (see Oikonomides, "Compagnies," 360-63) and the soldiers from the company of Judge of the Army Sgouros (unpublished, Ddlger, Regesten, no. 3084; I wish to thank the Centre d'histoire et civilisation du monde byzantin of the Col- lge de France for providing me with access to a photograph of the relevant documents).

24 MARK C. BARTUSIS

economic point of view, it could be compared to a peasant holding (paroikiki stasis).

And yet, it would not require more than a few twists in the institution of smallholding soldiers to create serious difficulties in distinguishing them from collective pronoia soldiers. For example, what if the Cumans settled by Vatatzes organized themselves communally, holding and working their lands or flocks jointly, and dividing the produce between households and soldiers in accord with some customary arrangement? Perhaps a

single glance at such a community would be sufficient to conclude that they were not collective

pronoia soldiers. And yet, aside from the obvious fact that the imperial act creating their community had to be different from the kind of document cre-

ating collective pronoia soldiers, it would be difficult to amend my definition to include these Cu- mans, hypothetically so organized, and to exclude the collective pronoia soldiers.

Indeed there is something very similar about collective pronoia soldiers and smallholding soldiers. In some cases, the two types of soldiers could be practically identical. For another example, and one that does not require exotic rules regarding property ownership, let us consider two imaginary propertyless peasants, George and Michael, who became soldiers. One day they heard that a cam-

paign army was passing by their village. Looking for an opportunity to improve their prospects, they went to meet it, and each found himself in a different division of poorly armed, untrained

peasants. Nevertheless, both George and Michael and their comrades in each division conducted themselves admirably in battle, and when the cam-

paign had concluded, an imperial officer ad- dressed each division of peasants. To George and his fellows, he offered parcels of land for cultivation, along with tax exemption, in return for continued service as a real soldier. To Michael and his comrades, the imperial officer granted a block of tax revenues from a particular village, also in return for continued military service. Both George and Michael and their comrades accepted the

propositions made to them and became soldiers. Michael and his comrades moved themselves and their families to a town, where they lived when not off somewhere fighting. Twice a year one of the men in Michael's group went to the village as-

signed to them, collected the tax revenues, and brought it to the others who divided it among themselves. As for George and his comrades, with arable land now in their possession, they tried for

a time to live on it and raise their own crops. But soon they found that the demands of military service (which always seemed to interfere with har-

vesting) made it difficult for them to actually culti- vate the land themselves (and, in any event, their wives preferred to live in town), and so they decided to lease their properties to paroikoi. Twice a

year one of George's comrades visited the village, collected the rents, and brought the money to town, where it was distributed proportionately to

George and the other soldiers. George was a small-

holding soldier, and Michael was a collective pronoia soldier. Is there any real difference between them? As far as I can tell, these soldiers, from an economic, fiscal, and social point of view, could eas-

ily be indistinguishable, especially in later generations. The only difference between the two types of soldiers would be in the documentation used for each grant.

Certainly one could add elements to each scenario that would establish a clear difference between our imaginary George and Michael, and so

by no means am I asserting there was or ever had to be an equivalence between the smallholding soldier and the collective pronoia soldier. I am suggesting only that there are some circumstances that fit our limited knowledge of the characteristics of both types of soldier. The question is whether this blurring of the distinction between smallhold-

ing soldiers and collective pronoia soldiers is due

simply to our lack of adequate knowledge of the details of each institution, or whether, as the appli- cation of the concept of pronoia evolved, there was a real tendency for the institution of pronoia to embrace forms of remuneration that had been distinct in previous periods. The latter possibility could explain why the historians so rarely distin-

guish pronoia from other kinds of non-cash

grants. Indeed, from what we know of military policies during the fourteenth century, it is quite possible, as N. Oikonomides ("Compagnies," 357) has suggested, that the institution of collective

pronoia may have been supplanting that of the

smallholding soldier. Moreover, the parallel between the joint pronoia of collective pronoiars and the communal settlement of smallholding soldiers may have led to the eventual classification of both types of grants as "pronoia" regardless of their origin.

Many questions regarding smallholding soldiers cannot yet be answered. For example, we do not know whether the land from which the smallhold-


ing soldier derived his livelihood generally was en- cumbered with a tax burden or received an exkousseia. Nor do we know whether it was the rule for at least the families of the smallholding soldier to work such land themselves, or whether, as in my imaginary example, it could be leased for a rent. The most tantalizing is whether individual small-

holding soldiers existed, men that owned and farmed individually granted plots of arable land and were not associated with a community or col-

ony of other, similar soldiers. In contrast to the ar- tificial colonies created by late Byzantine emperors, I have found no such "organic" arrangement of smallholding soldiers, that is, no obligation of

military service that, through men or through property, had its origin prior to 1204. And so, while it remains logical to think that there were some soldiers (as well as guards, I might add) that received tax exemption on their land on condition of service, the thought remains in the realm of mere conjecture. With the important exception, of course, of certain pronoiars, I know of no example from the late Byzantine period in which it is certain that a man had received tax exemption in return for personal military or paramilitary services.

It could be argued that the institution of smallholding soldiers was useful to the state for two reasons. First, smallholding soldiers were less of a drain on the fisc than mercenaries. After the initial land grant, the only expenses incurred by the treasury were for rations, at least for those associated with the navy. Of the groups cited only the Tza- kones, as far as we know, received regular pay in addition to their land grants. Second, of the three primary types of soldiers (pronoiar, mercenary, smallholding), smallholding soldiers had the strongest attachment to the land. This made them good defensive troops who, in theory at least, could have been planted on whatever ground needed to be defended.

Nevertheless, it can easily be shown that smallholding soldiers were clearly not the warriors of choice among late Byzantine emperors. Only two emperors, as far as we can tell for sure, created smallholding soldiers, John Vatatzes and Michael Palaiologos, and both created such soldiers for reasons that were not based entirely on military requirements. Vatatzes' decision to make the Cu- mans into smallholding soldiers was as much an attempt to avert a potential disaster by finding something to do with thousands of newly subjected semi-civilized peoples. Michael VIII's creation of the Thelematarioi was a means of rewarding the

men that had helped him retake Constantinople and, just as important, of maintaining the political support of the inhabitants in the area around the City, and his transplantation of the Tzakones was partly undertaken to repopulate the capital. Only the creation of the Prosalentai seems to have had little but military need at its heart.

Significantly, the Prosalentai, as rowers, required less training and equipment than the other groups of smallholding soldiers, and this points to some of the problems inherent within the institution of smallholding soldiers. It is no accident that the examples of smallholding soldiers that I have de- scribed all fall into the light-armed category of warrior. Giving a soldier land, and asking him or his family or even his neighbors to work his fields will not yield sufficient income to produce the kind of soldier the state most wanted, heavily armed cavalry. And evidence derived from the praktika of pronoia soldiers shows that it required at least several households of paroikoi and thousands of modioi of arable land to produce one such soldier.'0v

Further, how would one go about dismissing a smallholding soldier? A mercenary could be denied his salary, and, with a bit more effort, a pronoia soldier could be denied his revenues. Both were essentially fiscal acts. But to fire a smallholding soldier and refuse him his remuneration meant taking away his land, at best an awkward affair. Even more troublesome is the problem of the smallholding soldier household that could not produce a fit soldier, an issue with which students of middle Byzantine military lands have had to wrestle.

I think there are two reasons why smallholding soldiers appear so rarely in the sources of late By- zantium. First, as the professional soldiers lowest in prestige (surpassing only the non-professional peasant bands and servants accompanying armies), the historians preferred not to dwell upon them, and instead, to focus on the more glorious exploits of native pronoia soldiers and Latin mercenaries, both of whom tended to serve as heavy cavalry. Of the four groups Pachymeres tells us about, Gregoras mentions only two of them, the Cumans and the Tzakones, even though he used Pachymeres' history when composing his own work. In the portion of Gregoras' history where he takes up the story on his own without Pachymeres' help, there is no mention of any smallholding sol-

1071 am speaking of the documents in Xgnophon, nos. 15 and 16, and in P. Schreiner, "Zwei unedierte Praktika aus der zwei- ten Hdilfte des 14. Jahrhunderts,"JOB 19 (1970), 37-39.

26 MARK C. BARTUSIS

diers, even in the abstract, though the Thelema- tarioi and Prosalentai certainly existed well into the fourteenth century, and the two thousand Cu- mans lent by Milutin and then settled in Thrace toward 1320 may even have formed a new group. And from a reading of Kantakouzenos, one would

get no idea that there was such a thing as small-

holding soldiers in late Byzantium. Perhaps the su-

perficial similarity of the pronoia and the small-

holding soldier permitted the historians, especially Kantakouzenos, to lump them both conveniently together under the rubric of those that held "incomes from lands."

Nevertheless, the frequency with which the historians describe the unruly, ineffectual, or counter-

productive actions of the untrained and undisci-

plined elements within the army indicates that the low status of smallholding soldiers alone cannot

explain the historians' reluctance to deal with them. It is not easy to escape the conclusion that

smallholding soldiers were never more than a special element within the late Byzantine military.

Northern State University Aberdeen, S.D.

bartusis on the problem of small holding soldiers in late byzantium

Documents

ten gold pieces

dumbarton

urban guard

late byzantine

late byzantine

late byzantine

anonymous

late byzantine